Subsisting on a handful of dates and occasional sip of camel's piss

The sort of man who will happily walk barefoot for months across a waterless desert, subsisting on a handful of dates and occasional sip of camel's piss, but when back of civilisation, cannot endure the most trivial discomfort. He becomes frantic even if his egg isn't boiled right for breakfast.

John Verney, cited in A. Maitland, Wilfred Thesiger (2007), 139

I thought it sounded a deadly, deadly dull country to live in

In his seventies he said: 'I imagined that England was like India. I was very disappointed when my father told me that, in England, there were none of the animals or birds I knew. No hyenas, no oryx, no kites. I thought it sounded a deadly, deadly dull country to live in.'

A. Maitland, Wilfred Thesiger (2007), 51