Thesiger's account of his visits to the marshlands in the 1950s and early 1960s, though perhaps not as well written as his crossing of the empty quarter or Gavin Maxwell's own account of the Iraqi marshlands, still remains a classic of modern exploration literature. His presage about what would soon happen to the marshes and their inhabitants is haunting, for as Nik Wheeler (photographer in Gavin Young's "Return to the Marshes") recently wrote in my "Wetlands of Mass Destruction: Ancient Presage for Contemporary Ecocide in Southern Iraq": "Wilfred Thesiger was unfortunately quite prescient when he wrote in the mid-sixties that 'Recent political upheavals in Iraq have closed this area to visitors. Soon the Marshes will probably be drained; when this happens, a way of life that has lasted for thousands of years will disappear.'" And tragically, it has.