Robert Twigger

Robert Twigger is a British author who has been described as, 'a 19th Century adventurer trapped in the body of a 21st Century writer'. He attended Oxford University and later spent a year training at Martial Arts with the Tokyo Riot Police. He has won the Newdigate prize for poetry, the Somerset Maugham award for literature and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award.

In 1997, whilst on an expedition in Northern Borneo, he discovered a line of menhirs crossing into Kalimantan. In 1998 He was part of the team that caught the world's longest snake- documented in the Channel 4/National Geographic film and book Big Snake; later he was the leader of the expedition that was the first to cross Western Canada in a birchbark canoe since 1793. Most recently, in 2009-2010, he led an expedition that was the first to cross the 700 km Great Sand Sea of the Egyptian Sahara solely on foot.

He has also written for newspapers and magazines such as The Daily Telegraph, Maxim and Esquire, and has published several poetry collections, including one in 2003, with Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing.

Robert has published Real Men Eat Puffer Fish (2008), a humorous but comprehensive guide to frequently overlooked but not exclusively masculine pastimes, while his latest novel Dr. Ragab's Universal Language, was published to acclaim in July 2009. Robert now lives in Cairo, a move chronicled in his book Lost Oasis. He has lead several desert expeditions with 'The Explorer School'.

Robert has given lectures on the topic of 'Lifeshifting', an approach which emphasises the need to centre one's life around meaning-driven motivation. Drawing on experiences working with indigenous peoples from around the world, he has spoken on 'work tribes' and polymathy. He has also spoken on leadership. Some of these talks have been to companies such as Procter and Gamble, Maersk Shipping, SAB Miller and Oracle computing.