The Last of the Greats ~ Thesiger, Freya Stark and Fleming

Travel writing needs to find its stature again

How can I lament a future unseen? Perhaps it is because today we are berefit of great explorers like Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark and Peter Fleming, and in our quest for the most comfortable armchair, we may have forever consigned classic travel literature to the back of the bookshop.

Wilfred Thesiger

Freya Stark

Peter Flemming

Wilfred Thesiger, Freya Stark and Peter Fleming wrote from the Victorian era to the mid-20th century; they wrote books of rare depth in adventure, about worlds on the edge of being destroyed by Western civilisation. But as opposed to today’s journey men and woman, they immersed themselves totally into the culture that was no longer foreign to…