Major Tom Harnett Harrisson, DSO OBE (26 September 1911 – 16 January 1976) was a British polymath. In the course of his life he was an ornithologist, explorer, journalist, broadcaster, soldier, guerrilla, ethnologist, museum curator, archaeologist, documentarian, film-maker, conservationist and writer. Although often described as an anthropologist, and sometimes referred to as the "Barefoot Anthropologist", his degree studies at University of Cambridge, before he left to live in Oxford, were in natural sciences. He was a founder of the social observation organisation Mass-Observation. He conducted ornithological and anthropological research in Sarawak (1932) and the New Hebrides (1933–35), spent much of his life in Borneo (mainly Sarawak) and finished up in the US, the UK and France, before dying in a road accident in Thailand. Early life and education Harrisson was born on 26 September 1911 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the son of Geoffry Harnett Harrisson (1881–1939), an engineer, and Marie Ellen Cole (1886–1961). Another son, William Damer Harrisson, was born in 1913. The family lived in Concordia, Entre Ríos where his father had been working as a railway engineer and then manager since 1907. In 1914, at the start of the First World War, the family sailed to the United Kingdom where Geoffry Harrisson joined the British army. He was highly decorated for his service and eventually rose to the rank of Brigadier-General. Harrisson was socially isolated throughout these early years, with no friends apart from his brother. His father was away in the army, and his mother showed little interest in her children. The family moved frequently, and Harrisson later recalled no "lived in, loved place". With no toys to occupy them, their nanny Kitty Asbury entertained her charges with long country walks, which stimulated a great interest in nature. Harrisson had learnt to read by the age of five by studying Asbury's books on natural history. In 1919, Harrisson's parents moved back to Argentina, "dumping" – as Harrisson later described it – their sons at Eastacre preparatory school and later Winton House preparatory school, Winchester. School holidays were spent unhappily as paying guests at various vicarages. There was a brief interlude during 1922 and 1923, when Harrisson and his brother were taken back to Argentina by their father. It was the best year of his childhood. With his father as teacher, he learnt to hunt, fly-fish and climb. He became interested in birds: he built an aviary and