Only a moderately intriguing adventurer

John Bierman, the co-author of a recent book on Alamein, had doubts about writing this biography of Lazlo Almasy, the Hungarian-born explorer of the Libyan desert, whose exploits were ‘immortalised’ in Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, and the subsequent Oscar-winning film by Anthony Minghella. Bierman did not want to be seen to be taking ‘a ride on the coat-tails’ of the novel and the film (in which case a change of subtitle might have been advisable). He was also, rather puzzlingly, concerned that he might find ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ with regard to Almasy’s alleged Nazi past. Lastly, and more tellingly, he was unsure whether Almasy was an important enough historical figure to warrant ‘a full treatment’ and, related to this, he was worried whether he could find ‘enough primary source material to justify a new biography’. Although Bierman decided to go ahead with his ‘project’ he might have been better advised to have listened to his doubts.

Denied access to the Almasy family papers at Burg Bernstein in Austria, Bierman has had to rely, to a large extent, on the work and generosity of other writers and researchers in order to retell the story of this minor and moderately intriguing Hungarian adventurer who played a bit part in the desert war. Far from uncovering the real story of the man whom an old bedouin rather flatteringly called Abu Ramleh, ‘Father of the Dunes’, Bierman seems intent on whipping up a sandstorm and obscuring and even burying Almasy’s reputation in the Great Sand Sea, along with the lost army of King Cambyses, so that it too achieves a mythical status. Bierman does this through the questionable technique of playing up the allegedly ‘contradictory and confusing’ nature of the available evidence on Almasy’s inclinations and actions. Thus, he casts sufficient doubt on the accusations that Almasy was a Nazi sympathiser to make us believe that he was just an old Hungarian conservative royalist.