Robert Twigger | |
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Born | Solihull | 30 October 1962
Occupation | Author |
Subject | Travel, exploration, adventure, cross-cultural studies |
Children | 2 |
Website | |
www |
Robert Twigger (born 30 October 1962) is a British author. [1] He travels widely but divides his time mostly between the UK and Egypt.
Robert Twigger educated at Balliol College, Oxford University. [1] He initially studied engineering, but after six weeks switched to politics and philosophy. [1] He won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. [1] He also staged a film festival for student films, as well as directing two films himself. [1]
Following university, he worked in the publicity department of a record company and taught English and studied martial arts in Japan for three years. [1] After that he travelled widely in remote places for a number of years. He stood, as an experiment in participatory politics, for the Extinction Club party in the 2001 general election in the Oxford West and Abingdon constituency, receiving 93 votes. [2]
Robert Twigger has written 15 award winning fiction and non-fiction books, which have been translated into 16 languages.[ citation needed ] He has also written articles for newspapers and magazines including The Daily Telegraph , The Sunday Times , Lonely Planet magazine, Maxim , the Financial Times and Esquire . He is a winner of the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year award and the Somerset Maugham award and in 2007 his book Angry White Pyjamas was voted by Waterstone's staff as the best sportsbook of the last 25 years.[ citation needed ]
Twigger has also published several poetry collections, including one in 2003 with Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing.
Twigger currently writes and draws a quarterly comic called This Simple Life featuring memoir based material.[ citation needed ]
In 1997 Twigger's expedition to North Borneo and Kalimantan discovered a line of menhirs across a vast stretch of jungle never before recorded.
Twigger's failed attempt to capture a record-breaking snake in Indonesia in 1997 was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, entitled Big Snake along with Twigger's book on the expedition. [6]
In 2004 Twigger led an expedition that completed a three-season, two-thousand-mile journey across North West Canada in the wake of eighteenth-century explorer and fur trader Alexander Mackenzie. The team were the first to successfully complete this route in a birchbark canoe since 1793. Of all those who took part only Twigger completed the whole route.
In 2005 Twigger and Steve Mann made the first exploration of the Western Desert using a hand hauled wheeled trolley during which they discovered the tracks of László Almásy's baby Ford expedition of the 1930s.
Since 2006 Twigger has made regular desert journeys with the expedition group "The Explorer School". In 2009–2010 he became the first person to walk the entire 700 km of the Egyptian Great Sand Sea, following the route of German explorer Gerhard Rolhfs across the Egyptian Sahara.
The English Patient is a 1992 novel by Michael Ondaatje. The book follows four dissimilar people brought together at an Italian villa during the Italian Campaign of the Second World War. The four main characters consist of: an unrecognizably burned man — the eponymous patient who is presumed to be English; his Canadian Army nurse; a Sikh British Army sapper; and a Canadian self described as a thief. The story is set during the North African Campaign and centers on the incremental revelations of the patient's actions prior to his injuries, and the emotional effects of these revelations on the other characters. The story is told through the characters' perspectives and "authors" of books the characters are reading.
The English Patient is a 1996 epic romantic war drama directed by Anthony Minghella from his own script based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Michael Ondaatje, and produced by Saul Zaentz. The film starred Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas alongside Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe and Colin Firth in supporting roles.
Patrick Andrew Clayton DSO MBE was a British surveyor and soldier. He was the basis for the character of Peter Madox in The English Patient.
László Adolf Ede György Mária Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós was a Hungarian aristocrat, motorist, desert explorer, aviator, Scout-leader, and sportsman who served as the basis for the protagonist in both Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient (1992) and the movie adaptation of the same name (1996).
Gilf Kebir is a plateau in the New Valley Governorate of the remote southwest corner of Egypt, and southeast Libya. Its name translates as "the Great Barrier". This 7,770 km2 (3,000 sq mi) sandstone plateau, roughly the size of Puerto Rico, rises 300 m (980 ft) from the Libyan Desert floor. It is the true heart of the Gilf Kebir National Park.
Percy Howard Newby CBE was an English novelist and broadcasting administrator. He was the first winner of the Booker Prize, his novel Something to Answer For having received the inaugural award in 1969.
Zerzura is a legendary city or oasis located in the Sahara Desert.
Robert Macfarlane is a British writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Benedict Colin Allen FRGS is an English writer, explorer, traveller and filmmaker known for his technique of immersion among indigenous peoples from whom he acquires survival skills for hazardous journeys through unfamiliar terrain. In 2010, Allen was elected a Trustee and Member of Council of the Royal Geographical Society.
Sir Walter William Herbert was a British polar explorer, writer and artist. In 1969 he became the first man fully recognized for walking to the North Pole, on the 60th anniversary of Robert Peary's disputed expedition. He was described by Sir Ranulph Fiennes as "the greatest polar explorer of our time".
Angry White Pyjamas is a book written by Robert Twigger about his time in a one-year intensive program of studying Yoshinkan aikido.
Senshusei course is an intensive, 11-month aikido training program conducted at Yoshinkan Aikido's honbu dojo in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. The course has received attention through Robert Twigger's book, Angry White Pyjamas (1997).
Stephen James Backshall is a British naturalist, explorer, presenter and writer, best known for BBC TV's Deadly 60.
Steven Hall is a British writer. He is the author of The Raw Shark Texts, lead writer of the video game Battlefield 1, and writer on Nike's World Cup short film The Last Game.
Operation Salam was a 1942 World War II military operation organised by the Abwehr under the command of the Hungarian desert explorer László Almásy. The mission was conceived in order to assist Panzer Army Africa by delivering two German spies into British-held Egypt.
Michael Asher is an English desert explorer, writer, historian, deep ecologist, and educator. He has been acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts on the desert and its nomadic peoples. He has travelled and lived in the Sahara and the Arabian desert, published both non-fiction and fiction works based on his explorations and encounters, and presented several documentaries based on his published works.
Hansjoachim von der Esch was a German explorer in Egypt and Sudan, as well as German ambassador to Syria and Morocco.
Expedition Africa is an eight-part reality television miniseries that originally aired from May 31, 2009 to July 12, 2009 on History. Produced by Mark Burnett, the program follows four modern day explorers—a navigator, a wildlife expert, a survivalist, and a journalist—as they substantially retrace H.M. Stanley's famed expedition to find Dr. David Livingstone. Their route deviates somewhat from Stanley's in that it includes a treacherous crossing of the Uluguru Mountains, which Stanley circumvented. Additionally, whereas Stanley took roughly 8 months to find Livingstone, the explorers on the show have 30 days to complete the 970-mile journey deep into the interior of Tanzania.
Mark Alexander Law is a British journalist and author, known for his book on Judo called The Pyjama Game, A Journey Into Judo.
Robert Mustard is a teacher of Yoshinkan Aikido. He is currently ranked 8th Dan, Shihan.