Robert Twigger- writer, writing coach, editor,
I'm a writer and winner of the Newdigate poetry prize and the Somerset Maugham award among others. My books include:
Angry White Pyjamas- I train with the Tokyo Riot Police in an arcane form of aikido and write about the life of Master Gozo Shioda. (Hachette and Harper Collins). Winner of William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. Voted best sportsbook of last 25 years in 2007 by Waterstones.
Big Snake- I follow the route of Wallace a contemporary of Darwin in Indonesia while looking for giant snakes and hoping to bag the 1912 Roosevelt prize. this became a Nat Geo documentary called Big Snake in which we briefly caught the world's longest snake. (Hachette and Harper Collins)
The Extinction Club- A novel following in the footsteps of Pere David saviour of the rare Chinese deer Milu (Penguin and Hamish Hamilton)
Being a Man- a compedium of adventures plus some theorising about mascluinity (Hachette)
Voyageur- following the route across northern Canada of Alexander Mackenzie using an authentic birchbark canoe over three summer seasons. (Hachette)
Lost Oasis- searching for lost oases in the Sahara following old explorer routes (Hachette)
Real Men eat Puffer Fish- a humorous book with some of my best writing in it! (Hachette)
The Modern Explorers- a Thames and Hudson book on exploration
Zenslacker- 101 ways to do NOTHING well. (KDP)
Dr Ragab's Universal Language- a novel (Picador)
Red Nile- travels and tales from along the Nile (Hachette)
WALK! a book about the long distance walking and how it can help you. (KDP)
White Mountain- travel and tales from the Himalayas (Hachette)
Micromastery- a guide to learning new skills better (Penguin)
Walking the Great North Line- a new route up England following our ancient past. (Hachette)
36 Islands- a book about Arthur Ransome and the Lake District's islands. (Hachette)
Praise for Robert Twigger's Work
"It is just good to be in his company as he walks and reflects on such esoteric subjects as shamanism, Continental philosophy, church porches, land ownership, autobiography, family history and the stressful and sometimes soul-destroying nature of modernity." Patrick West Times Literary Supplement On WALKING THE GREAT NORTH LINE
"What holds it together is a remarkable voice. This is not a term I usually use for praise, as it is mostly facile and means simply “style”. But here it seems applicable. Twigger, as he appears in the book, is both gleefully innocent and snarlingly cynical, a lover of bad jokes and Continental philosophy, the clown who is the butt of his own pratfalls and mishaps and yet a form of mentor or guide." Stuart Kelly Booker Prize Judge on WALKING THE GREAT NORTH LINE
Chris Townsend of the Great Outdoors on WALKING THE GREAT NORTH LINE: "I found accompanying the author on his walk interesting and enjoyable. Never being sure where his magpie mind would jump to next was always intriguing. This is a curious but worthwhile addition to the literature of walking. Recommended!"
"I couldn't stop telling people about this book. Wise and joyful, it genuinely changed the way I thought about learning - and it left me bursting to put it into action." - Tim Harford, author of Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy writing about MICROMASTERY.
"Fabulous Storytelling" Mick Herron
"Micromastery is a triumph. A brilliant idea, utterly convincing, and superbly carried through." Philip Pullman.
“Wholly Original. A tour de force.” Will Self
“Remarkable, enjoyable and difficult to categorise,” New Scientist
"Firm narrative and sweeping views," John Keay.
"Robert Twigger is an inspiring author. Read his books." Nick Hodgson, Kaiser Chiefs
"A brilliant book!" Ray Mears
"Lively, interesting, unusual and entertaining," Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita
"My favourite book about Japan." Loyd Grossman
“A unique and dazzling talent,” Tony Parsons
Adrian Turpin of The Independent called him “The Adventurer Philosophical” and his eclectic range of travel books to remote places focus on adventure, hardship and humour.
"One of the best and most original of recent travel writers." Catholic Herald
“Deliriously Clever,” New York Times
"The best poet of his generation." Boris Johnson
"Robert Twigger is one of the handful of authors whose books I go out and buy on publication date. In my opinion he's our finest travel writer." Anthony McGowan
"A bona fide media daredevil with brains and balls beyond the norm" Daily Telegraph
“Riveting,” Washington Post
“A yarn that manages to be ripping, thoughtful and times very, very funny,” Maxim
“A book of unexpected brilliance... subtle, funny, stimulating and original,” Patrick French
“A frantic, very funny urban quest,” Simon Garfield
“A modern classic and the best martial arts book ever. It's cool.” Angharad Jackson
"You've got bollocks my lad," Franc Evans, English Matador
“Another terrific read.” Katherine Lacey, Oxford Times
"A fascinating compendium of stories," Daily Telegraph
“The most intriguing sports book ever to win the William Hill sports book of the year award.” Daily Mail
“Robert Twigger's books have won him acclaim as a writer of enormous energy and originality,” The Scotsman
“Poetry in motion,” Sue Townsend
"White Mountain is not for everyone. But if you think you'll like you'll probably love it. I did." Simon Ingram, Trail Magazine
"Twigger is such a charmer, delightful and poignant by turns" (Duncan Fallowell Daily Express)
"Lost Oasis is very funny in places. But the jokes never obscure its wider, rather ascetic theme. This is a thoughtful book ... the true act of exploration is internal" (Adrian Turpin Financial Times)
"Twigger is no latter-day Lawrence or Thesiger. He's much more anarchic - and funny - than that and this is an intensely modern book" (Justin Marozzi Sunday Telegraph)
"Try to tie this man down - show him a far horizon and he's straining at the leash, writing with enthusiasm as he sets off in search of an enchanting mirage" Iain Finlayson SAGA
Full of little gems (Toby Lichtig The Observer)
The rich vein of mocking self-humour that courses through these pages ... is refreshingly candid (Barnaby Rogerson Times Literary Supplement)
Twigger's book on the history of the river Nile is one of the those unexpected great reads... This is a non-fiction book that reads like a great, page-turning novel. (CATHOLIC HERALD)
Red Nile is a scintillatingly colourful account of a river and a region that explorer/adventurer Twigger knows well... probably the author's magnum opus. (SUNDAY TIMES)
Red Nile by Robert Twigger is how history should be written and taught. The reader is taken on a sweeping journey through the endless story of the Nile, where so much began and so much is still happening. (Robin Hanbury-Tenison COUNTRY LIFE)
RED NILE gives great insight into a place where the growth of civilisation is so closely lined to the power of nature. (GOOD BOOK GUIDE)
This torrent of tales sweeps up everything from hippos (the Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar kept four Nile hippos at his mansion in Medellín) to erotic papyrus. (The Daily Telegraph)
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)
Robert Twigger, by his own admission, typifies the type of middle-class modern man who longs for primitive physical adventure. That he combines this with a witty and vivid writing style is the reader's luck. ...Entertaining throughout (Katie Owen Sunday Telegraph)
A truly interesting journey, told with wit and panache. ... Twigger is a fine raconteur... his book is also an eloquent tribute to the melancholy surrealism of small settlements in the middle of empty space, and the severity and grandeur of wild places (Joanna Kavenna Spectator)
This book is mesmerising from the first page to last and deeply, unexpectedly moving. (Duncan Fallowell Daily Telegraph)
There is a nice line in self-deprecation that runs through what is a very elegantly written account of Twigger's obsessive, masochistic reprise of Alexander Mackenzie's trek across the Rockies 213 years ago by traditional birchbark canoe. ... Twigger reminds us that the adventurous spirit of the British explorer is alive and well, and Voyageur is a fine addition to the genre (Daniel Topolski Guardian)
A genuinely delightful piece of work, and I thoroughly recommend it
(Marcus Berkmann Sunday Telegraph)
Robert Twigger is not so much a travel writer as a thrill-seeking philosopher (Esquire)
Voyageur is a great read, brimming with intrepid adventure, close shaves and servings of pemmican. It is a grown-up Swallows and Amazons (Lizzie Matthews Wanderlust)
A compelling read that vividly brings to life an often overlooked historical achievement (Tom Chesshyre Times Literary Supplement)
The above infomation sourced by the excellent Dr Garry Shaw
More of my interests:
The Anti-Descartes Project
In 1619 Descartes crept close to a warm stove and tried to find the origin of certainty in introspection. Since the previous origin of certainty had been God, which had become mired in scholasticism, you can see the basic idea. But introspection can never lead to certainty, and certainly not when you're introspecting in a nice cosy warm place... many philosophers since have tried to show why, but only the encyclopedists and polymaths knew that Descartes was looking in the wrong place down the wrong end of the telescope. Go to the icy steppes and then do some looking... You move towards certainty not by drilling deep but by spreading wide. The problem of knowledge is about having a nose for the truth. No set of rules can replace that. Early on I realised some people could find almost by instinct the key book on a subject, the best placed person to talk to. They were able to master the key elements of any field. They were 'expert' in the sense that they knew how the field lay, what was important, what facts deserved attention and which didn't. As Nietszche grandly put it: there are no facts, only interpetations. The notion of 'generalist' is too tame. I am talking about an approach to knowledge in which a format for 'correct orientation' is discerned in several fields. This format is then used not as a rigid theoretical overlay but as a starting point, a helpful template so that rapid progress can be made. An Anti-Descartes Project might be an encyclopedists endeavor in which available knowledge is sifted and re-presented in a correct orientation. I attempted something like this with Micromastery, where the learning methods of each field were examined from many sources to arrive at the fastest way to learn a subject. Further books of mine that go in this direction include Walk, which was an attempt to look at how one structures any attempt at achieving meaning and happiness.
The Strandlooper Collective
The Strandloper were a branch of the Khoekhoen African people who lived from prehistoric times, hunting and foraging along beach and desert areas, until their lifestyle was almost totally extinguished by modern development. Though the 500 or so who remain are making something of a resurgence. (As an anti-apartheid term Strandloper became a term associated with those who rejected the colonising and modernising ambitions of south africa in favour of inhabiting liminal zones, as a coastal forager or beachcomber.)
In order to recognise the key importance of walking and watching, the term Strandlooping describes the activity of tracking through, recording and experiencing liminal zones- deserts, beaches, river and lake edges, uninhabited islands. I formed the strandlooper art collective in 2002 with artist and animator Ben Forster, journalist Samia Hosny and traditional canoe builder John Zeitoun. This was the core of a 2002-2004 tracking expedition of the Peace River system which was documented in photography by Joseph Gillingham, and in my book Voyageur. Since then we have:
Explored egyptian Sahara- 2006-2008- recorded in the book Lost Oasis
Tracked Sand Sea route of Gerhard Rohlfs -2010
Himalayan trails- 2014- recorded in the book White Mountain
Chesil beach documentation - 2016 - recorded in Bimbler Zine.
Home Made Mapping of Glentrool- 2017- part of Wigtown Festival
Great North Line- 2018- recorded in the book Walking the Great North Line
Oman Desert- 2019
36 Islands of Lake district- 2021- to be published in 2022
A Note on the Blog
The BLOG as an artform in it own right as opposed to an extension of something else is only just beginning to become noticed. It actually coincides with its death as a viable method of mass communication. Now that social media and podcasting have come to dominate the blog can be seen as an archaic form whose primary qualities are longevity and size. The main inspiration for me is the ongoing blog of polymath Jonathan Vernon- over a million words and 25 years and still going strong. The main aim of most blogs (a word of immense ugliness, I still dislike it), released from the confines of a piublisher or a conventional outlet is either self promotion or, as in the case of TWIGBLOG, an attempt to somehow teach the world, be a self-help guru, stand above the rest of the world's hurly burly. Words are cheap in blogging and you only really hit your pace after 700 plus articles (TWIGBLOG currently has over 1000). The blog also contains hidden sections known only to readers from the beginning. These loyal people are the real audience of the blog- not the casual visitor flipping through the web and clicking on some random link or name.
One of my latest projects is to publish TWIGBLOG in its entirety as a really heavy book. It will be more than a thousand pages long. Early subscribers will naturally get...free postage...
In keeping with most blogs I say things about myself that are either fantasy projections (the photo above bears a scant resemblance to me) or attentuated versions of the truth. Unlike a book jacket summation or a 'bio' the blog leaches into domestic life leaving the blogger stranded between exhibitionism and a footdragging 'requirement' to tell all...
This blog, like almost all my work contains an artful mix of real stuff presented bluntly (what people have said about my work for example) and real stuff presented in a way that substantiates the notion of the blooger as homegrown guru. "What blogs do you follow" used to be a question asked before social media achieved its dominant role.
A Note on the Art
As a creative artist I have been at work since my first 'stunt' when I was 14 and placed a large white bin liner made into a flag on the school lightning conductor with the words "THINK NOW" written on it. The now familiar elements of exhibitionism, assumed teacherdom, cheap ready-to-hand materials, homemadeness, adventure and having an 'experience' that conincided with those of prominent people of the past (Clive of India had placed a flag on his school roof, TE Lawrence had been a roofclimber' at Oxford) were all present in nascent form. I have simply continued. Some have ended up as books, some as films and photographs, some as poems (one set of poems ended up on a deck of playing cards alongside those of TH Benson and Doris Lessing) and some as paintings and drawings. The main projects have been: Hunting for Bears in the Pyrennees, Cowfighter, Zombie Hunt in Haiti, Angry White Pyjamas in which I trained alongside the Tokyo Riot Police in traditional martial arts for a year long experiment in endurance. Big Snake- in which I attempted to the world's longest snake with a tribe of former headhunters - filmed by Channel 4 - something I would never do again- the snake hunting I mean. Others include following in the footsteps of former explorers namely Alexander Mackenzie in Canada and Gerhard Rohlfs in Egypt. In 2013 I originated and edited The Modern Explorers for Thames and Hudson. Over several years I have been engaged in photographic projects at Wigtown festival in Scotland. Most recently, I documented in photographs the 'forgotten words' over a hundred writers wished would be used again. IN 2020, in the book Walking the Great North Line, I followed my fascination with ancient sites and rock art with a 400km journey up a new NS line in the very middle of England that went through over 43 prehistoric locations.
Polymathics
Polymathics is the study of multiple expertise. Though there is benefit in specialisation- usually commercial- there is also benefit in a wider sense to being polymathic- multi-active and sometimes multi-expert. The truth is, many polymathic types just can't help themselves- they refuse to conform and be specialists. And even many specialists yearn to be allowed some extra-curricular interest, even if it is only an engrossing hobby of some kind. Polymathics is an obvioulsy multi-disciplinary attempt to understand and better use our polymathic selves in a world that coerces us to be specialists. My book Micromastery (Penguin 2017) introduces and expands the notion of Polymathics, and this website continues that task.
Original Thinking
The word original is a word I early on learned to avoid. Nothing is original, everything is copied or stolen, there's nothing new under the sun. It's also a rather comfortable position for lazy critics to adopt. One of the writers I admire- Jorge Luis Borges- one of the most original writers of the 20th Century (some might argue the MOST original) was always genuinely amazed that people found him to be so. He had simply in his own mind stitched together influences from the writers he most admired. But he employed a trick of the truly original- encircling. Encircling is a concept that is borrowed from the game of Go. In Go you have to encircle a player's piece (stone) in order to capture it. But you can have so many individual encircling operations going on you may not notice your opponent is only a move away from encircling you. Original thinkers and makers and doers build up from copied sources but at a certain point create a LINK between them that is wholly new. And this effectively sunders the older connections, makes them almost irrelevant.
But as well as people making BIG new connections there are thousands of unknown original artists and thinkers out there bringing to bear their intelligence on their own situation and experience creating thousands of smaller but equally original connections. They are both open and rather humble; they are people who spend a lot of time on their own thinking about things, not plugged into crowd-mind devices. Once you start looking you'll find them and be able to benefit from them. On this website I share some of the insights I've gained from meeting original thinkers and some of my own original thinking.
Analogue Activism
As an early adopter of all things digital...including this blog. It's with mixed feelings that I have turned increasingly BACK towards the analogue. Yet you can never really turn the clock back can you? All relations have subtly changed with time. A printing press or a large format plate camera mean something quite different now than they did in their functional heyday. So I embrace the new meaning of analogue- which is nothing short of a potential revolution in our bland acceptance of technoauthoritarianism...
My recent book MICROMASTERY is dedicated to people who want to grow, become more, happier, brighter, bigger, better- however you want to put it. This blog supports the book- here are hundreds of articles, many featuring some aspect of development or personal growth. You can get to them from the archive, by using 'search this sit' or just scrolling down the side.
You'll find I often recommend the books of Idries Shah. It's because they have been a huge and useful influence on my life and work. I think reading his books is the best start for any kind of life altering you have in mind.
I believe that what I have to offer is best appreciated in this blog or in my books. But I know that some people love to chat and desire the attention you get in such encounters (me too of course). However to reduce the incidence of such chats on lifeshifting/personal growth/original thinking I charge £1000 a day to put people off. If you really think you'll benefit then get in touch using the email at the foot of this page. But doing some more reading/thinking will probably be time better spent and cheaper too.
One aspect of this site is an interest in exploring, promoting and developing the idea of polymathics as a distinct area of study. Though we may follow a single path, a specialisation - for commercial or other reasons - we all know rejuvenation, new ideas, new energy and complete revolutions in thinking come from outside our own little ghetto. The more open you are the more possibilities you have.
Photos I've taken of other writers with their own life messages form part of the The Message project to be found HERE
Eccentricity and Art
All art is eccentric in the sense that it throws us off balance, makes us see something in a different way. and therefore it follows that all artists should be eccentric- to a greater or lesser degree. Whereas business seeks to replicate the same winning formulae again and again, an artist is nearer a scientist in that they abhor repetition and immediately something succeeds they want to turn to something new. I share with many the passion to invent, and art- in the broadest sense of the word- is the only arena in which this is celebrated without reservation. I do many things simply to see how they will look as a picture, painting or experience written down.
A book that may interest:
Click on the below to see it at amazon:
Zenslacker- 101 things to bear in mind when you're doing nothing
This is available for kindle only. It's a very short book and is designed for people who need a few good ways to breakout of feeling time-and-spirit poor.
Click here to get to Amazon for my book: RED NILE
Sunday Times (May 19 2013) say: "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"
"No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." Helen Keller.
Oh yes, aardvarks... "Aardvarks can dig fast or run in zigzag fashion to elude enemies, but if all else fails, they will strike with their claws, tail and shoulders, sometimes flipping onto their backs lying motionless except to lash out with all four feet. They are capable of causing substantial damage to unprotected areas of an attacker. Their thick skin also protects them to some extent." Are you a smart one?
contact: robtwigger 'at' gmail.com
"Robert Twigger is a British author who has been described as, 'a 19th Century adventurer trapped in the body of a 21st Century writer'. He attended Oxford University and later spent a year training at Martial Arts with the Tokyo Riot Police. He has won the Newdigate prize for poetry, the Somerset Maugham award for literature and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. In 1997, whilst on an expedition in Northern Borneo, he discovered a line of menhirs crossing into Kalimantan. In 1999 He wrote and presented the Nat Geo/Channel 4 documentary Big Snake, which depicted the capture of the world's longest snake; later he was the leader of the expedition that was the first to cross Western Canada in a birchbark canoe since 1793. Most recently, in 2009-2010, he led an expedition that was the first to cross the 700 km Great Sand Sea of the Egyptian Sahara solely on foot. He has written nine travel related books, as well as writing, video making and taken photographs for newspapers and magazines such as The Financial Times, National Geographic Adventure, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Spectator, New Statesman, Maxim, Wanderlust, Esquire and many more.
Robert spends a good deal of time in Cairo, a move chronicled in his book Lost Oasis. He has lead several desert expeditions with 'The Explorer School'. He has published three poetry collections, including one in 2003, with Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing.
Robert has given lectures on the topic of 'Lifeshifting', an approach which emphasises the need to centre one's life around meaning-driven motivation. Drawing on experiences working with indigenous peoples from around the world, he has spoken on 'work tribes' and polymathy. He has also spoken on leadership. Some of these talks have been to companies such as Procter and Gamble, Maersk Shipping, SAB Miller and Oracle computing.
The name: Twigger is a funny name: where's it come from? A small tribe, Twiggers congregate most densely around the midlands of Britain. They are supposedly related to all twiggs, twigges and twigs, who are in turn the rare bunch (or should I say bundle) whose trade in ancient times was that of local witch and dowser- hence the need for a twig, the hazel rod used to detect water by the dowser. More boring derivations say it's an Angle name from Denmark. Moving forward, Ned Twigger is a character in Charles Dickens' Mudfog and other Sketches- a friendly and expansive chap. Earlier a 'twigger' was a 17th century slang word for a strumpet. Hmm. In the World War II graves of El Alamein in Egypt there is one Twigger in the Allied section but two in the German cemetary. Another mystery. I have been called every possible improvisation on the word twigger since early years and actually if I hear a new variation I have gone from hating it to rather liking the attention. Witchcraft and wizardry still run in one branch of the family, honored by a mention in J.K.Rowling's Quidditch through the Ages: the Twigger 90 is a sort of broomstick. In the urban dictionary a twigger is either a black person who uses twitter, or a white person who impersonates a black person using twitter. Great name!