Wilfred Thesiger

Wilfred Thesiger0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy nine, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

Our castaway this week is probably the last in the great tradition of the individual explorer, Wilfrid Thessinger. mister Thesiger, how much does music mean in your life?

Presenter0:42

I'm afraid you have picked

Presenter0:44

Somebody who has no musical sense at all. None.

Presenter0:49

Virtually none. Do you not sing to cheer yourself when you're travelling o on a long, long, empty desert? I'd never inflict that on my companions.

Presenter0:58

Do you own a record player? No, I've never owned a wall set or a record player.

Presenter1:04

Well, you're going to get a record player with the compliments of the BBC. You'll find it on the island. But you have to choose the eight records.

Presenter1:11

What's the first? It's going to be rather an odd selection, I think. The first one is Forre's Requiem and the solo Piedgesir. Why do you choose this? Well, I heard it for the first time when I was in Nairobi the other day, and it struck me as uh being incredibly beautiful.

Presenter2:32

Pier Jezu from the Foray Requiem, the choir of King's College, Cambridge, and the solo treble Robert Chilcott, who's probably got quite a different voice now. Now, you were born in Addis Ababa. How did that come about?

Presenter2:47

My father was British Minister at the time. It was at the end of the reign of Menlik. And the country at that time really was very remote and very barbaric. And in consequence, I did have a very odd childhood. I was there till I was about nearly nine years old. There's a family tradition for government service. Your uncle was Viceroy of India. Yes, he was. And strangely enough, my grandfather had been in the Napier's Magdalen expedition against Theodore. So in a sense, that's three of us who've been connected with Ethiopia.

Wilfred Thesiger3:19

Perfect.

Presenter3:23

A richly colourful nation, of course, the emperor from a line of kings from way back to Solomon and Sheba.

Presenter3:31

Yes, they certainly believed that. I mean, it's a tradition. And you've got the fact that the Ethiopians were converted to Christianity. I can't remember whether it was in the fourth or fifth century, but they were among the earliest of the Christians. And quite unlike any other part of Africa, they weren't a tribal people. They were regional in the way that France was in the Middle Ages.

Wilfred Thesiger3:47

Mm-hmm.

Presenter3:57

Had you brothers and sisters? Yes, I'd three brothers younger than myself. Now in your family, of course, travel was a commonplace. Living in such a remote area they were they were moving about. And my earliest true recollection, I suppose, was when I was about three, it was journeying down to the coast and um camels and water holes and men with spears.

Presenter4:19

At the age of seven, I think, during the First World War, you were actually in the trenches. I mean, not in France, but i in in the

Presenter4:27

Yes, my father couldn't take his family back to England in 1917. And so he went out and stayed with my uncle, who was then Viceroy in India. And on the way we stopped off in Aden, and the General took my brother and myself up into the trenches. And I remember standing on a sandbag and watching the shells bursting over the Turkish lines. That's a very unique experience.

Wilfred Thesiger4:48

Yeah.

Presenter4:51

Certainly at that age.

Presenter4:53

You came back to this country to prep school. Could you adjust?

Presenter4:58

No, I think that was partly the trouble. Certainly I hated my private school and uh hadn't really adjusted by the time I was at Eton. You had never seen a game of cricket for a start, had you? No, never played football. We regarded my brother and I were regarded as complete freaks and also monumental liars when for instance I said that I'd been in the trenches in the First World War.

Wilfred Thesiger5:07

I've never seen

Wilfred Thesiger5:09

What had you?

Presenter5:20

And after Eton, after Oxford, what did you read? I read history. Were you going to follow in the family professional? No, I'd always intended to get back to Ethiopia. Yes. And um the Sudan was next door to that and I felt there was the best chance of getting if I joined the Sudan political service.

Wilfred Thesiger5:30

P.S.

Presenter5:38

In Oxford you were a blue, a boxing blue, light heavyweight.

Presenter5:43

And uh you pursued that light heavyweight career for four years, I think? Yes, I boxed for four years for the university. Has that stood you in good stead?

Presenter5:51

No, I've never really had occasion to use it.

Presenter5:55

You like to have adventurous vacations.

Presenter5:58

Yes. My first vacation long back from Oxford, I got a job as a farman on the tramp steamer and went out to Constantinople, which is a place I very much wanted to see. Another time I got a job as a deckhand on a trawler off Iceland. Now your Oxford studies were interrupted.

Presenter6:20

by a rather exciting invitation.

Presenter6:24

Yes, I came back off this cruise as a farmer in the Mediterranean. I was shaking the dust out of my trousers and I found an invitation from Haile Selassie to attend his coronation and a notification from the Foreign Office that I would be attached to the Duke of Gloucester's mission.

Presenter6:41

The pageantry at that coronation must have been incredible. It was. It was the last sort of because it went just after that. But this was, this was the Ethiopia of the past, with the lion's main headdresses and the shields and the spears and the whole thing. Let's have your second record. What shall that be?

Presenter7:00

My second record is some Ethiopian church music.

Presenter7:05

And I've chosen this because I went to Lalibela about 1950 or something. And Lalibela is this extraordinary place where you've got the rock-hewn churches in northern Ethiopia, one of the wonders of the world. And I'd done a long four months' journey around by mules. And then I arrived at Lalibela, and it happened to be Easter. And I said to the abbot that I'd like to go to the church service. And he said, Come along with me, I'm going at nine o'clock. And I went, and in fact, the service went on till about

Presenter7:41

six o'clock in the morning. They wouldn't have missed a moment of it. Then we came out and the priests were in a line.

Wilfred Thesiger7:45

Yeah.

Presenter7:47

long white line uh dancing slowly to the beat of the silver drums in front of the ark of the covenant.

Presenter7:54

Well, as you'll know, we haven't been able to find any.

Presenter7:57

Ethiopian Easter music, but we have some Christmas music. It's very much the same. I mean this um music when I listened to it just now gave me completely the feel of it.

Speaker 38:19

Ah

Wilfred Thesiger8:26

Uh

Speaker 48:26

Yeah.

Wilfred Thesiger8:30

Uh

Speaker 48:32

Wow.

Speaker 38:52

Yeah, look.

Speaker 38:59

BAAAAAAA

Speaker 49:04

Yeah.

Speaker 39:06

Uh

Speaker 49:06

Uh

Speaker 39:06

Uh

Speaker 49:07

Ah.

Presenter9:08

The Birth of Christ, the music of the Ethiopian Coptic Church. While you were in Ethiopia or Abyssinia, which do you use? I I always get mixed up. It was always called Abyssinia during the last war.

Speaker 39:17

Thanks to the next one.

Wilfred Thesiger9:17

Yeah.

Presenter9:21

But since then it's become known as Ethiopia.

Presenter9:24

Well, from Abyssinia after the coronation of Haile Selassie, you set off on your first trip.

Presenter9:32

Where did you go?

Speaker 39:32

Yeah, where to go?

Presenter9:33

I went down into the Danakil country and uh before I started I had to talk to the British ambassador and uh he was rather reluctant to let me go down there by myself. I persuaded him to let me go and I remember as I left the room he said well be careful don't go and get yourself cut up because that would rather spoil the effect of the coronation. They have some rather unpleasant habits the Danikill with with their captors have they not? Yes well your whole social status depended on the number of men or boys whom you'd killed and castrated and then when you died they put up a monument to you with one stone for every person you'd killed and sometimes you saw a monument with as many as seventeen stones. And they used to proclaim their their accomplishment by what they wore.

Wilfred Thesiger10:00

Yeah.

Presenter10:22

Yes, you could see whether he was wearing an iron bracelet or a ivory band round his arm, feather in his hair, all that sort of thing. And also on these large knives which they wore across their stomachs, they had one thong down for every person they killed.

Presenter10:39

So you s set off in the midst of all this. How big an expedition had had you mounted? How many chaps?

Wilfred Thesiger10:40

Reuse

Presenter10:45

I hadn't very many. I think I had about five or six camels and about um eight people with me. We didn't go very far, of course, but once I dropped the railway line out of sight, I knew I was off on my own in exciting country. And it was something that

Wilfred Thesiger10:52

We didn't

Presenter11:02

Or my childhood, or the time I was at Oxford, I'd been dreaming to do something like this, and now I was doing it. Were you armed? Oh yes, I was getting a rifle. Yes. And so were several of the people with me.

Presenter11:15

What happened that the Danikil on the whole were friendly? The ones that you met? Yes, these ones I met were friendly. It was the second journey after I'd left Oxford that was the dangerous one, where I was down there for a long time. In fact, the government um got a message down to me ordering me back after I'd started. This was in the same country? Yes, and then I had to start all over again.

Wilfred Thesiger11:33

This was in the same country.

Presenter11:37

Was there some particular outfit on the rampage at that time that they were? Yes, there were. They were fighting each other rather more than usual. But in fact, and the thanks were entirely due to my smiley headman. We got through it without losing anybody. Out eventually to the sea and I discovered what happened to the Hawash River, which is what I'd gone down there to try and discover. It ended in a great big sodium lake, a waste of very bitter water and black rock.

Wilfred Thesiger11:41

Yeah, for well

Wilfred Thesiger12:00

What did happen to me?

Presenter12:08

Well then into the government service in the Sudan, which kept you busy really until the war started, although you managed to get in in a few trips.

Presenter12:16

I got in one long trip into the Sahara only which took me up to Tibesti with camels.

Presenter12:22

What is the motivation? What

Presenter12:24

is the urge that you have to travel to isolated places that

Presenter12:29

Virtually nobody else wants to touch.

Presenter12:32

No, I don't know. It's curious, isn't it? I think it's a feeling of adventure. It's the challenge of it. It's the company of the people who live there, the desert people. And you've always avoided any kind of motorized transport, always by animal. Yes, in that extent I've always been in the old tradition. Where I went it was never possible to go with cars.

Wilfred Thesiger12:41

One

Wilfred Thesiger12:46

Yeah.

Presenter12:53

anything like that. And so it was all done on foot or with uh porters or with animal transport.

Presenter12:59

And then for four years you had plenty of travelling at His Majesty's expense. Um the Sudan Defence Force with the Wingate Liberating Force in Abyssinia. That was a sensible piece of casting sending you there, wasn't it? A man who knew what he was doing. Extraordinarily anxious to get there, but I felt a sort of sense this for me was a personal crusade.

Wilfred Thesiger13:14

Who knew what he was doing?

Presenter13:23

Most of my generation were emotionally involved in the Spanish Civil War. I wasn't. What upset me was the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. And uh the emperor had been a very close family friend for years. And uh it was very distressing to me when the country was taken over by the Italians. And I felt this was a sort of

Wilfred Thesiger13:34

Yeah.

Presenter13:44

Crusade to get him back on into his country.

Wilfred Thesiger13:45

Restored.

Presenter13:47

Well, then the western desert, some of the time you were operating behind the German line.

Presenter13:52

Now after the war you had your travels paid for by a desert locust unit. What were you up to then?

Presenter13:59

Yes, over the golden key that unlocked Arabia for me.

Presenter14:03

To somebody who's interested in desert exploration, the empty quarter offered the sort of ultimate challenge.

Presenter14:11

The Sahara by then had been explored, the French had been all over it, had been pacified. But the empty quarter was still as it had always been. Well that was over thirty years ago. But ever since you've spent a good slice of every year travelling in some isolated part of the world in Africa or Asia. Yes. I've never spent since I left Oxford, I've n never spent more than three months a year in this country. And the rest of it has been in as remote areas as I could find.

Presenter14:41

Let's have your third record. What shall that be?

Presenter14:43

It's the Scots guards and the pipes. And I've always been thrilled by the sound of pipes. Have your Scots blood? Yes. I had two great grandmothers, one was a Gordon, one was a Bruce. Perhaps I've inherited this love of uh pipes from them.

Presenter15:45

the pipes and drums of the Second Battalion Scots Guards, and the Regimental March, Highland Laddie.

Presenter15:52

You've learned to travel light, haven't you?

Presenter15:55

Yes, I've always wanted to travel light.

Presenter15:58

How light?

Presenter15:59

As light as was possible. I mean, when I was in Arabia, everything I had with me would go into a saddle bag. Really? A spare shirt possibly. My camera, a book or two.

Wilfred Thesiger16:06

Grab it.

Presenter16:11

Um some spare ammunition.

Presenter16:14

Um and a blanket or two. And you'd sleep under the stars, no question of that. Oh no, no, I slept on the ground under the stars, exactly like the Arabs did.

Wilfred Thesiger16:18

Oh Lord.

Presenter16:22

Yes. I've always when I've traveled I've always wanted to travel as the local people did.

Presenter16:28

Now, surely the expenses on on on private exploration must be enormous. You have to hire.

Presenter16:35

chaps and and camels or yaks or

Presenter16:38

Ponies or what whatever you're operating on? Well, the first two uh journeys I did in Arabia were paid for by the desert locust people. Oh yes. And after that I'd made contact with the Arabs and it wasn't all that expensive. I had small party, four or five people with me, and I could afford that.

Presenter16:58

You were a great hunter. Now this is something one doesn't do any more.

Presenter17:02

Yes, when I was a small boy I sort of dreamt the whole time of big game shooting. And then after the coronation, Halaslaci's coronation, when I went down into the Danakil country, I did quite a lot of hunting there. And then when I was in the Sudan, I spent a lot of time shooting lion, which were vermin in those days and lived very largely off the herds of the people in my district.

Presenter17:29

What about languages? How many do you have?

Presenter17:33

I can speak Arabic, I can speak some French, and some rather bad Swahili. Arabic gets you around. Arabic got me around the places where I travelled in those days. It didn't get me around, of course, when I was up in the Karakorams in the Hindu Kush. I had to use an interpreter. And um that was frustrating because it separated me from the people among whom I travelled.

Wilfred Thesiger17:48

Yeah.

Presenter17:57

Fourth record. What now?

Presenter17:59

The fourth record is The Maiden and the Nightingale. Victoria Los Angeles.

Speaker 318:57

Uh

Presenter19:02

Victoria de Los Angeles The Maiden and the Nightingale from the Opera Gollascas by Granados.

Presenter19:09

Let's deal, mister Thessinger, with some of your major expeditions in a little more detail. Perhaps your most spectacular travels were your two crossings of that vast tract of Arabian desert known as the Empty Quarter. What's the area of it?

Presenter19:25

It's about five or six hundred miles from north to south and the best part of a thousand from east to west.

Presenter19:32

And the terrain, mostly big dunes? Big dunes. It's uh all set in the Arabian desert and therefore in a sense it's a desert within a desert. And the heart of it are these giant dunes which rise up to seven hundred feet and perhaps a hundred miles long. The trouble is of course that you haven't got any water though, there's very little water. You've got to transport every single thing.

Wilfred Thesiger19:54

Yeah.

Presenter19:56

Yes, and you had to travel perhaps four hundred miles at about two and a half miles an hour to from one well to the next. What worries you is the uh collapse of your camels. Well, um if you couldn't find grazing for them, they got very thirsty.

Wilfred Thesiger20:07

Because they've got to have water too.

Presenter20:14

or dreaded that they might collapse.

Presenter20:17

What sort of ration did you give yourself?

Presenter20:20

Well, we started off with quite a lot of ration. I had quite a lot of Arabs with me, most of whom I left behind. And they were extraordinarily improvident, and everybody came and heard that I was travelling there and had a lot of food, and they all came along and ate the food, and you couldn't turn a guest away. And so by the time we got to get across the empty quarter, we were down to about half a pound of flour each per day. Rarely starvation rations. And water? And water. We had a pint of water a day. And very brackish it was too.

Wilfred Thesiger20:43

Um

Presenter20:50

Only a pint a day in that heat. How long did the trip take?

Presenter20:55

The actual um getting across the empty cor that um waterless track took us about I think fifteen or sixteen days.

Presenter21:03

Now the sheer monotony of it must be dispiriting. One dune looks exactly the same as another. No, it doesn't. Doesn't it? No, there's tremendous variety, tremendous variety in the colour of the sands. No, I was I never felt it was monotonous. Until like we came round outside it onto the gravel flats. They were monotonous.

Presenter21:24

Now you you crossed the empty quarter twice. Why did you do it a second time? Well I'd been offered a job with the locust unit killing locusts and um it just wasn't good enough. I wanted to get back to the empty quarter, get back to the rashid with whom I'd been living and um go on with my explorations.

Presenter21:43

For the second time you had to be very wary of of hostile nomads. The second time we were going into country where the the whole desert was at war, yes.

Presenter21:52

And in fact, I didn't realize it at the time, had we run into any Arabs on the far side, I think we should certainly have been killed. But a chance shower of rain up north had drawn them out of the desert and we were able to get into Slale the town wi without meeting any of them. And then we were under Ibn Saud's protection, though we ended in prison. Did you?

Wilfred Thesiger22:10

And then we

Presenter22:15

Yeah. How long for? Not very long, because luckily I've got really almost a day because Philby, who was in Riyadh, intervened on our behalf.

Presenter22:27

Record number five.

Presenter22:29

is the singing of the Roshaida, actually an Arab tribe in the northern Sudan. It's typical of the sort of Arab songs. Very nostalgic to me.

Speaker 422:45

I gotta go.

Speaker 422:58

Uh

Speaker 423:00

The House of America.

Speaker 423:04

Yeah.

Wilfred Thesiger23:23

Yeah, yeah, so

Presenter23:41

A song of the

Presenter23:43

Rashida

Presenter23:44

Desert Nomads. You've been to so many fascinating corners it's hard to select, but your years in in southern Iraq have a special fascination. The marsh tribes there were living exactly as they had for five thousand years.

Presenter23:59

Yes, I think that's true.

Presenter24:01

I'd been in Kurdistan and uh I went down because I wanted to see the wild fowl, do a little bit of duck shooting in the marshes. I expected to stay there for about ten days or a fortnight. And then I remained on the north for the best part of eight years. Yes. Curious way these things happen. They live mainly by fishing, is that right? No, buffalo and their rare economy is buffaloes. And then certain fishing, wild fowling, certain amount of rice. Mhm. And they are friendly people? Once when they've broken through, yes, I found them delightful people. Wherever you've been, you've always lived in the way that the native people have lived and

Presenter24:44

Wearing their clothes, usually, following their customs? Yes, insofar as I could. Certainly in Arabia, and then again in the marshes.

Wilfred Thesiger24:46

Yeah.

Presenter24:51

One thing which has always helped in in getting you accepted is is your skill in medical matters. You always helped in that way. Yes, that was one of the things that got me recognition in the marshes.

Presenter25:04

We have to face the sad fact that to travel as you like to do, you you have to turn yourself

Presenter25:11

into a sort of anachronism. You have to avoid motor roads and airfields and game parks and hotels which have sprung up all over the place. That's the trouble today. You can't get away from them. And increasingly as you get the tourist hordes and millions and millions of them getting in and out of airplanes all over the world, they're destroying the world which I value. Interests me. They're like swarms of locusts.

Speaker 325:33

Yeah.

Wilfred Thesiger25:33

Yeah.

Presenter25:37

Record number six. Shelly Arpin, singing the death of Boris Gutenhoff. Why'd you choose this?

Presenter25:43

Well, because w when I was at Eton we used to play it in the I haven't heard it for fif I think it's fifty one years. It is stuck in my mind. And um when I was at Eton we used to play it in the library of the house I was in.

Presenter26:58

The Death of Boris from Musorgsky's Boris Godanov, sung by Shalyapin.

Presenter27:03

Now many travellers rush into print after a week end in Berlin.

Presenter27:07

Your literary output has been small but distinguished. A book about your experiences in the Arabian desert, Arabian Sands, which is now regarded as a classic. You followed it with the Marsh Arabs, and that was all until now. We know we have a new one, or a partly new one, Desert, Marsh, and Mountain. Yes, that was going to be a picture book. And then the text increased. A bit difficult to say which it is now, whether it's the photographs illustrating the text or the text explaining the photographs. So it's excerpts from your two previous books, plus some new materials and these photographs, which are splendid. Are you a self-taught photographer? Yes, I've never had any lessons.

Presenter27:49

And none of your photographs were in in colour? No, I don't like coloured photography. Why?

Presenter27:55

I don't know, in the same sort of reason that I suppose I like collecting drawings but don't want paintings. Mhm. I like the the s line, not colour. Record number seven.

Wilfred Thesiger28:02

Yeah.

Presenter28:07

Record number seven is Eliot's What the Thunder Said from the Wasteland. This is something I would love to have written. It's most tremendous stuff.

Speaker 328:20

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces, After the frosty silence in the gardens, After the agony in stony places, The shouting and the crying, Prison and palace and reverberation of thunder of spring over distant mountains, He who was living is now dead, We who were living are now dying.

Speaker 328:44

with a little patience.

Presenter28:46

Alec Guinness reading the opening of What the Thunder Said from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. Now, obviously.

Presenter28:55

You're one man we wouldn't have to worry about on a desert island. You could cope with the problems, I think.

Presenter29:00

I think it would be suicidal to to set off on any boat which I had built. On the other hand, I'd be prepared to risk that rather than stay by myself on a desert island. In all my travels, I've relied very much on the comradeship of the people who went with me. You like the loneliness of the terrain, but you like to have people with you. I like to have the local people with me, yes. I should hate to sit there all by myself indefinitely. I'd make any effort to get away. Where are you off to next? I'm going back to Kenya in a few days' time. Your last record.

Wilfred Thesiger29:18

Do you like the leatherness?

Wilfred Thesiger29:22

I like

Presenter29:35

My last record is Dela Meir's Arabia. Why? Well, in 1946, I travelled for about 300 miles from Abha up to Taif in the Hejaz in Arabia, which isn't very far from Mecca. And I found an extraordinary bit of country, quite unlike anything I'd seen anywhere else. You've got forests of juniper and wild olive. You got jasmine and honeysuckle, wild roses and pinks and primulas, and ice-cold streams. And again, it had the fascination for me that I think the only person who'd been into some of that area had been Philby. And therefore it was more or less the first person in there. And this completely unexpected type of Arabia at about 9,000 feet.

Presenter30:31

has always represented to me Delamire's pain.

Speaker 430:36

Far are the shades of Arabia, Where the princes ride at noon,'Mid the verdurous vales and thickets Under the ghost of the moon. And so dark is that vaulted purple, flowers in the forest rise, And toss into blossom'gainst the phantom stars Pale in the nooonday skies.

Presenter30:57

Robert Harris, reading Walter de la Maire's Arabia.

Presenter31:01

If you would take only one of the eight discs that you've played at

Presenter31:05

I would take the first one, Pier Jesus.

Presenter31:08

That boy's solo, which I think is incredibly beautiful. From the Floray Requiem.

Wilfred Thesiger31:12

Uh

Presenter31:13

And one luxury to have with you.

Presenter31:15

I take a large tin of acid drop.

Presenter31:19

It's a thing which I've often craved for in the days of time. Right. Well, as as many as you like in all flavours.

Presenter31:26

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island, and uh not a big encyclopedia. I take Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in how many volumes and how many pages.

Presenter31:40

I think it's about seven volumes. It would last me'cause I have read it through a couple of times, but I'd be quite happy to sit down and read it again.

Presenter31:48

Right. And thank you, Wilfrid Thessager, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for putting up with me. Goodbye, everyone.

Wilfred Thesiger32:03

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.