Arabian Sands.

London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd,, 1959. Focuses on the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula between 1945 and 1950 First edition, second impression, signed by the author on the title page. With the finely engraved bookplate of archaeologist and rare book collector, Mary Anna Marten, on the front pastedown. This was Thesiger's first book and "in his opinion, his finest" (ODNB). "During the years that I was in Arabia I never thought that I would write a book about my travels... Seven years after leaving Arabia I showed some photographs I had taken to Graham Watson and he strongly urged me to write a book about the desert. This I refused to do... The following day Graham Watson came to see me again, and this time he brought Mark Longman with him. After much argument the two of them persuaded me to try to write this book. Now that I have finished it I am grateful to them, for the effort to remember every detail has brought back vividly into my mind the Bedu amongst whom I travelled, and the vast empty land across which I rode on camels for ten thousand miles" (Introduction). Mary Anna Marten (1929-2010) was appointed a trustee of the British Museum in 1985, and later established the Ancient Persia Fund at the British Academy in 1988, to further Persian studies. She was especially interested in Iran, a country she explored frequently, and where she would visit Roman Ghirshman at his archaeological dig in Choga Zanbil, an ancient Elamite complex in the Khuzestan province. Octavo. Original beige cloth, spine lettered in black and gilt. With pictorial dust jacket. Frontispiece and 46 plates, 8 maps to the text, some full-page, with folding map in a pocket at the back. Minor discolouration of head and tail, a few trivial stains on covers and one on fore edge, binding cracked to cords after p. 326 (from weight of end pocket maps), internally clean, a very good copy in foxed jacket, crumpled at top and bottom edge, some soiling, else very good.