The Empty Quarter

'[Philby] made a series of remarkable journeys, of which the greatest was his crossing of the 'empty quarter' in 1932. On these journeys he travelled by camel and later by car. By day he collected place names, temperatures, compass bearings, barometric pressures, rocks, fossils, flora and fauna, and ancient inscriptions. At night he wrote them up in his diaries, squatting in the sand by lamplight and hiding his work from his suspicious Arab escort' (ODNB).