British artist and writer (born 1962)
Robert Twigger (born 30 October 1962) is a British author. He travels widely but divides his time mostly between the UK and Egypt.
Life.
Robert Twigger educated at Balliol College, Oxford University. He initially studied engineering, but after six weeks switched to politics and philosophy. He won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He also staged a film festival for student films, as well as directing two films himself.
Following university, he worked in the publicity department of a record company and taught English and studied martial arts in Japan for three years. 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.
Robert Twigger has written 15 award winning fiction and non-fiction books, which have been translated into 16 languages. 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.
Works.
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.
Expeditions.
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.
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.
References.
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