Thus the Arabs name the half a million square miles of sand and waste in southern Arabia. It is one of the cruellest deserts in the world and, apart from the Antarctic, was the last great land area to be traversed by a European.

Wilfred Thesiger talks to Laurens van der Post about the five years he spent in and around this desert.
Before him, no other traveller - apart from a few wandering Bedouin who live on the desert's fringes - had twice dared to cross these empty wastes. Travelling as one of a small band of camel-mounted Bedouin, speaking their language and sharing their almost constant fear of thirst, starvation, and armed raiders, Thesiger's knowledge of desert life is unique. It will remain so, for that world is already vanishing before the invasion of technicians in search of oil.