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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.

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.