Phillip Osborne

Phillip Osborne (16 March 1904 – 23 August 1936) was an early travelling companion of Sir Wilfred Thesiger, educated at Christ's Hospital and Pembroke College, Oxford University. Osborne was a keen student of Greats and French Literature, gaining a first class degree before travelling to Syria where he became fluent in Arabic and conversant with Iron Age Semitic Culture. He first met with Thesiger at Abyssinia's Awash River, later exploring the remote parts of the country with its Danakil nomads. His subsequent work and study, which was intended for publication by 1935 under the title 'Danakil', was lost to fire. Osborne died of an undiagnosed fever at Suez in 1936.