macrolit: Here’s my second post with background information for The English Patient (TEP). (To start
macrolit: Here’s my second post with background information for The English Patient (TEP). (To start from the beginning, click here.)..1930s: The band of real-life explorers (on whom the characters of Ondaatje’s novel and Minghella’s film are based) used a combination of motor cars and aeroplanes in their quest to find Zerzura, the mythical lost “Oasis of the Birds” that was rumored since the Middle Ages to contain great riches guarded by a sleeping (buried) king and queen; but as long as the king and queen weren’t disturbed, the riches could be taken. This tugged at the hearts of the adventurous explorers and cartographers who formed the group Ralph Bagnold dubbed “The Zerzura Club.”..Ralph Fiennes’ Count Almasy: “You can’t explore from the air, Madox. If you could explore from the air, life would be very simple.”..Despite this statement, they did explore from the air. Aerial reconnaissance was used to take photographs (like the one above) over the Gilf Kebir, the plateau in the southwest corner of Egypt near the Libyan border where the real Hungarian explorer and aristocrat, Laszlo de Almasy, believed Zerzura could be found. The man who flew the beat-up old De Havilland Gipsy Moth aeroplane was Sir Robert Clayton, a 24-year-old man who heard about Almasy’s planned expedition and begged him to come along. Come along he did, and he brought his new wife, Dorothy Clayton. (That’s their photo on top of Herodotus.) The Claytons were the inspiration for Geoffrey and Katharine Clifton...And yes, the Claytons both died almost immediately as a result of their desert exploration, but it wasn’t in a suicidal plane crash as TEP depicts...More to come. ..Pictured: 1861 edition of Herodotus’ Histories; March 1933 and April 1939 editions of The Geographical Journal, published by the Royal Geographical Society, London; 1930s pilot goggles; early 1940s Graphlex Speed Graphics camera; WW2-era compass by U.S. Gauge Company, New York. -- source link