The Red Nile. Robert Twigger.

[Who2]

I have many books and films regarding my local River.
It's one of the reasons for me being where I am.
Robert or 'Twiggers as he is affectionally known writes many books usually about things he does, I once went deep into the Western Desert with him just us and 3 bedu and 7 camels, he had a GPS but refused to use it, thereby getting us lost more than once.
So a scottish friend bought me the book £25quid and another scottish friend bought it here. Thank You both.
Well worth a read as are his other books, like trying to catch the worlds biggest snake, he's a man after my own heart buying a kids inflatable and dangerously sailing around Cairo in denile....Buy it you'll make a nutter happy and raise funds for his next 'mad-cap adventure.

An excerpt: The word 'alcohol' comes from the Arabic al-kohl the black powdered eyeliner so favoured by ancient Egyptians and later adopted by the Arabs. Making al-kohl involved distillation of antimony, so 'alcohol' came to mean any process involving distillation (a curious irony that those who oppose distilled spirits invented the process).
See what I mean, Now I never knew that...enjoy...

Twiggers-"lost again ?

[Who2]

I'm only on the 2nd chapter and thoroughly enjoying "his beguiling style" will self and cannot wait to discover why he has acknowledged me....
Ps: fame at last!

[LovelyLadyLux]

@ Who2 - Your Amazon.UK review(s) pale compared to the Amazon.COM aka USA version (and after reading the USA review might just have to order this book):

About the Author

Robert Twigger is a British author, poet and adventurer. After attending Oxford University he trained with the Tokyo Riot Police, which became the subject of his bestselling book Angry White Pyjamas. He has been awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry, the Somerset Maugham Award for Literature and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. He led the expedition that was the first to cross the Great Sand Sea of the Egyptian Sahara solely on foot, and another that was the first to cross Western Canada in a birchbark canoe since 1793. He is the author of eight books, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as several collections of poetry.

Editorial Reviews

Robert Twigger's ambitious biography of the Nile is an unexpected triumph...a scintillatingly colourful account of a river and a region Twigger knows intimately...an elegiac moving book...hugely entertaining...probably the author's magnum opus -- James McConnachie THE SUNDAY TIMES a tour de force; a brilliantly written scrapbook of history and travel, geography and science, myth and legend both ancient and modern... Twigger allows the river's ever changing shape to inform this engrossing biography. It's a vast subject but he never becomes overwhelmed by the material and has written an elegant, amusing and fascinating book, buoyed by his own enthusiasm, that draws you along in its current -- Carl Wilkinson FINANCIAL TIMES Like the vast, fast-flowing river itself with its waters teeming with crocodiles, hippopotami and bilharzia, so Red Nile teems with arcane facts and high spirited asides... Red Nile provides a feast of quirky, fascinating bits of knowledge, both funny and memorable -- Caroline Moorehead THE SPECTATOR Crocodiles, dams, feluccas, pharaohs and papyrus, disputation about sources, literary and riverine, myths and realities of fecundity: only someone as crazy as Robert Twigger would attempt to tell the whole story of the Nile from soup to nuts, yet in Red Nile that's exactly what he has done, filtering the vast flood of his subject matter through an infectious individual style -- Giles Foden CONDE NAST TRAVELLER Using the physical presence of the river, the tumultuous recent events that have occurred along it and his own experiences... Twigger succeeds in capturing the key features of Africa's greatest river: that it is wide-reaching as it is long, touches every era of human history, from nobility to the baseless violence that has so often stained the waters red -- Anthony Sattin THE SUNDAY TIMES the Nile's own source has always been mysterious - in the Ethiopian highlands of in the Kagera River, which flows into Lake Victoria and on into the Nile proper, or in Lake Tanganyika? This is one of the previously unanswered questions tackled by Robert Twigger in this impressive book - a biography of the River Nile. [Twigger] knows the geography of this region well and is equally au fait with its turbulent history...many entertaining snippets of information THE LADY if you have read Twigger before, you will know to expect divergence, wit, a weakness with the esoteric, an ability to make even the most obscure details seem relevant. All of which is perfectly suited to this subject and makes for an entertaining and absorbing read THE OBSERVER Hugely impressive in its research, Red Nile is a torrent of fanatical rulers, assassinations, wild explorers and dastardly goings-on MAIL ON SUNDAY The Nile has attracted adventurers since ancient times, and Twigger heads for the source of the river... The history of the river and the countries it passes through is interwoven with many interesting snippets - for example that Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat said that the "attractive lines of the slim-fit uniform would be spoilt by wearing a bullet-proof vest" on the day he was assassinated THE TIMES Red Nile's mixture of factual and fictional narratives of heroic adventurers, lost tribes, vanished cities, trackless forests and lethal wildlife brought me back to the pleasures I derived as a child from reading old copies of the Boy's Own Paper and Chums Annual TLS Taking a characteristically idiosyncratic approach, [Twigger] tells the river's history through its most colourful stories, from Egypt's racy mythology to the visionaries and madmen who have plied its waters. Combining wide-ranging knowledge with first-hand forays upstream, it's a suitably Nilean accomplishment. A meandering insight of genuine depth LONELY PLANET TRAVELLER In Twigger's biography of 'the world's greatest river', he tackles the source of ancient Biblical tales through to exploring the downfall of Mubarak. There's enough bloody, treacherous history to make Game of Thrones look like a Mr Men book, which is to say that it's a relentlessly good read...a fresh revitalising dunk into these much-navigated waters WANDERLUST Explorer Robert Twigger has sailed Canada in a birch-bark canoe and walked the Egyptian Sahara. Now, he explores the Nile, taking in traces left by Cleopatra, Moses, Agatha Christie and the world's deadliest creature, the Nile crocodile CARA (AER LINGUS) magazine You'd be right to think that the world's longest river would have enough history to fill a book 12 times this size. Fortunately, that's the delight of Twigger's latest work: it filters out the drab and pumps in the peculiar without missing any crucial undulations along the way. Expect tales of passion, violence and splendour EASYJET TRAVELLER INFLIGHT MAGAZINE

[Brian Yare]

He has been awarded the Newdigate Prize for poetry ...

Newdigate? Was a U.S. politician involved?

[LovelyLadyLux]

Newdigate! The politician was probably Anthony Weiner who IS a US politician who seems most impressed with his OWN weiner as he keeps textings photos of it to mega women AND he IS still a viable candidate for political office. The little woman IS standing by her man Anthony and is the protégée of Hillary Clinton who also stood by her man, way back when, but I think Bill was more interested in cigars and interns.