Wilfred Thesiger was born into a privileged English background, the son of a diplomat, educated at Eton and Oxford. As soon as he could, on his first summer holiday at university, he travelled to Istanbul, going out by tramp steamer, back by train: the first of many adventurous journeys. At age 23 he went on his first exploration, of the Awash River in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). He became a colonial officer in Sudan, working in the desert region of Darfur and then the swampy Sudd, where he was responsible for shooting lions. While in Darfur he journeyed with local people by camel and visited the Tibesti mountains in the Sahara. In the Second World War he fought to liberate Abyssinia under the eccentric but charismatic Orde Wingate, and in the Special Air Service behind enemy lines in the Western Desert of north Africa. After the war he joined the anti-locust unit of the Food and Agriculture Organization, taking the chance between 1945 and 1949 to travel in the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Arabian Sands describes his two crossings of that region.