People like Wilfred Thesiger

Major Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger, CBE, DSO, FRAS, FRGS, also called Mubarak bin London (Arabic for "the blessed one from London") (3 June 1910 – 24 August 2003) was a British explorer and travel writer.

Thesiger is best known for his travel books Arabian Sands (1959), on his foot and camel crossing of the Empty Quarter of Arabia, and The Marsh Arabs (1964), on his time living in the marshes of Iraq with the Marsh Arabs. He donated his collection of 23,000 travel photographs to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

Thesiger was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the son of diplomat Wilfred Gilbert Thesiger, British consul-general and minister to Addis Ababa from 1909 to 1919. Thesiger's grandfather was Lord Chelmsford. Viscount Chelmsford, future Viceroy of India was an uncle, and the actor Ernest Thesiger was a cousin.