Wilfred Patrick Thesiger was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and was educated at Eton and Oxford. In 1930 Thesiger returned to Africa at the invitation of Emperor Haile Selassie and returned again in 1933 to lead an expedition to explore the course of the Awash river. Between 1935-1940 he served in the Sudan Political Service and joined the Sudan Defence Force to serve in World War Two. After the Second World War, Thesiger travelled across Arabia including two crossings of the great Arabian desert, the Rub' al Khali or Empty Quarter, and travels in inner Oman. He lived for some years in the marshes of Iraq, and then travelled in Iran, Kurdistan, French West Africa and Pakistan. He lived for many years in northern Kenya. Thesiger returned to England in the 1990s and was knighted in 1995.
Bertram Sidney Thomas was born near Bristol and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in Belguim and Iraq in the First World War and subsequently as an Assistant Political Officer in Iraq from 1918 to 1922, and Assistant British Representative in Jordan from 1922 to 1924. He was appointed as Finance Minister and Wazir to Taimur bin Feisal, the Sultan of Muscat and Oman, a post he held from 1925 to 1932. In this capacity, he undertook a number of expeditions into the desert, and became the first European to cross the Rub' al Khali in 1930-1931, a journey he recounted in Arabia Felix (1932), in which he described this desert's animals, inhabitants, and culture. During World War II, Thomas headed the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies in Jerusalem, where British Army officers were taught Arabic language and culture. He returned to England and died in the house in which he was born, in 1950.
Gertrude Caton-Thompson was born in London in 1888 and was educated at Eastbourne and in Paris. Her first experience in archaeology came in 1915 working as a bottle washer in an excavation in France. During World War I she worked for the British Ministry of Shipping as part of which she attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In 1921 Caton-Thompson embarked on studies at University College, London. The following year she began attending courses at Newnham College, Cambridge, before joining further excavations in Egypt in 1924. While much of her archaeological work was in Egypt, she also went on expeditions in other countries, for example, Zimbabwe and South Arabia. Her many contributions to the field of archaeology include a technique for excavating archaeological sites, and information on Paleolithic to Predynastic civilizations in Zimbabwe and Egypt. Caton-Thompson held many official positions in organizations such as the Prehistoric Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Caton-Thompson retired from fieldwork after the Second World War. A long time friend of Dorothy Hoare, a colleague from Cambridge, Caton-Thompson bought and shared a house with Hoare. After Hoare married Jose "Toty" M. de Navarro, another Cambridge lecturer in archaeology, the Navarros continued to share the house with Caton-Thompson. When she and the Navarros retired from academic life in 1956, Caton-Thompson moved with them to Broadway, Worcestershire. She resided with them and their son, Michael, for the rest of her life. She died in 1985, in her 97th year at Broadway.