Alexander Maitland

Explorers and travellers have always been attracted by the lure of the unknown. By traversing and mapping our planet, they have played a vital role in mankind's development. For almost two hundred years, the Royal Geographical Society has recognised their achievements by awarding its prestigious gold medals to those who have contributed most to our knowledge of the world.Taking us on a journey across mountains and deserts, oceans and seas, Exploring the World tells the stories of more than eighty of these extraordinary men and women. Some, such as David Livingstone, Scott of the Antarctic and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, are well known; whilst others, such as William Chandless and Ney Elias, are today less familiar. Some dreamed of being the first to sight a lake or a river; others sighted some of the world's greatest natural features by chance. Some were naturalists, anthropologists or mountaineers; others went in search of explorers who had vanished without trace, or had been shipwrecked or marooned.Filled with epic tales of endurance and perseverance, Exploring the World celebrates a group of exceptional individuals possessed of indomitable courage, boundless determination and adventurous spirit. It portrays a variety of fascinating lives driven by curiosity, wanderlust and the pursuit of knowledge - and, in doing so, provides a unique overview of two centuries of exploration.

Explorers and travellers have always been attracted by the lure of the unknown. By traversing and mapping our planet, they have played a vital role in mankind's development. For almost two hundred years, the Royal Geographical Society has recognised their achievements by awarding its prestigious gold medals to those who have contributed most to our knowledge of the world.Taking us on a journey across mountains and deserts, oceans and seas, Exploring the World tells the stories of more than eighty of these extraordinary men and women. Some, such as David Livingstone, Scott of the Antarctic and Jacques-Yves Cousteau, are well known; whilst others, such as William Chandless and Ney Elias, are today less familiar. Some dreamed of being the first to sight a lake or a river; others sighted some of the world's greatest natural features by chance. Some were naturalists, anthropologists or mountaineers; others went in search of explorers who had vanished without trace, or had been shipwrecked or marooned.Filled with epic tales of endurance and perseverance, Exploring the World celebrates a group of exceptional individuals possessed of indomitable courage, boundless determination and adventurous spirit. It portrays a variety of fascinating lives driven by curiosity, wanderlust and the pursuit of knowledge - and, in doing so, provides a unique overview of two centuries of exploration.

An illustrated look at two early-twentieth-century explorers whose work took them to deserts and mountain peaks, coinciding with the rise of modern photography along the way. Vittorio Sella (1859–1943) was the foremost mountaineering photographer of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, producing widely celebrated images of K2 and other famed peaks. Sir Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) was a writer, photographer, and explorer, whose greatest journey took him across the Rub’ al Khali, a vast desert encompassing much of the Arabian Peninsula. In his new book, Roger Härtl considers these two far-flung figures side by side, telling the stories of two influential explorers through their bibliographic and photographic work, and creating a tapestry where exploration, writing, and image-making all conjoin. As Härtl shows in this richly illustrated volume, the triumphs of Sella and Thesiger coincided with the end of a golden age of geographical exploration and with the rise of photography as we know it today.

John Hanning Speke was one of the great Victorian explorers and his most famous achievement was the discovery in 1862 of the main source of the White Nile in Lake Victoria Nyanza. Born in 1827, he joined the Indian Army at the age of seventeen, and after serving for ten years he joined Sir Richard Burton's abortive expedition to Somaliland.After a military interlude in the Crimea, Speke joined Burton's second Central African expedition in the winter of 1856, twice crossed Lake Tanganyika by canoe and finally pressed on to the Ukerewe Lake which he thought was the source of the Nile; Burton was sceptical.Speke's courage, perseverance and toughness were heroic and his instinct for wild life and wild country remarkable.In 1860 Speke was put in charge of a new expedition and finally penetrated to the place where the Nile flows out of Lake Victoria Nyanza.First published in 1971, Alexander Maitland's biography remains the only full-length study of Speke.

Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the great gentlemen explorer-adventurers, became a legend in his own lifetime. This biography investigates his family influences, his wartime experiences, his philosophy as a hunter and conservationist, his writing and photography, his friendships with Arabs and Africans amongst whom he lived, and his homosexuality.