HUDDERSFIELD-born author Michael Quentin Morton has just completed a remarkable book.
He describes it as the last testament of an explorer's life. The explorer - a geologist with the Iraq Petroleum Company - was his father Michael Morton, also from Huddersfield.
The book - a fulfilment of his father's wish for an account of his travels in the Middle East and the Arabian peninsular in search of oil.
Michael senior first became interested in geology at Royds Hall School and studied at Huddersfield Technical College before getting a degree in geology at Leeds University.
He applied for a job at ICI before being accepted as a field geologist with the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1945.
Almost immediately he was plunged into an area that then, as now, was the centre of world attention.
In 1946 he landed at the then Palestine port of Haifa. Later that year he was staying in Jerusalem at the YMCA across the road from the King David Hotel, headquarters of the British forces in Palestine when the King David was hit by a bomb planted by Jewish terrorists and 42 people died.
Luckily for Michael he was working at the company offices at the time.
For a while he visited places like Jaffat, Aleppo, Petra and Ma'an, sometimes in the footsteps of the famous Lawrence of Arabia, meeting some of the tribes he had met, discovering an affinity with the Bedouin.
But by late 1947 the search for oil had taken him to southern Arabia, where he was to do a lot of his subsequent exploring.
His travels there would take him through Aden, Dhofar, Oman, Qatar, the Trucial States and Abu Dhabi, although from time to time he returned to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Northern Iraq .
It must have been a colourful and eventful life, full of strong characters of many nationalities, with the hazards including sandstorms, scorpions, snakes, angry camels and, of course, warring tribes with their suspicion of the "Nasranis" or Christians.
The "oily men", as they were sometimes called, had their own secret weapon, their wireless set, with which they could threaten to call up bombers and other military assistance.
Some of the tribes they met must have seemed to be living in a time-warp, still using old Martini Henry rifles and Maria Theresa dollars.
But Mike, who had once declared: "If you can curse well enough you don't need any Arabic" soon became fluent and able to make himself understood.
And there were lighter moments, such as labourers who broke into song at the slightest excuse; a cook whose efforts were likened to "attempted murder"; strictly supervised strip poker in Aleppo; and torment by the girl belly-dancers who would not go away!
Probably one of the most hazardous missions was to Thamud, well inland in northern Hadhramaut, a wild ancient watering place used by Bedouins travelling across the southern rim of the Arabian Peninsula or venturing into the great Rub al Khali sand desert.
It was on this trip, seemingly, with temperatures on one plateau recorded at 47ºC (about 117ºF) that Mike got his name of Shaib al-Ahmar or Angry Red Man.
Perhaps with his red hair, red-faced, with his nose burned and a famous temper to match, this was brilliantly appropriate.
There certainly was good cause for being upset. A vital well proved to be 112km out of position on their maps and had to be fixed by a surveyor using BBC times and star positions!
An air of Boy's Own adventure seeps through these pages, as exemplified in Mike's many poems and cartoons, even though some of the expeditions had a very militaristic air.
Quentin quotes his father as saying famously: "I wish I had lived 100 years ago!"
Mike Morton retired from the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1971 but returned to his former haunts many times on work for other oil companies, in consultancy work, advising the World Bank and for the Royal Geographical Society.
He retired from the oil business in 1984 but took an active interest in the Middle East until he died in late 2003.
* In The Heart Of The Desert. Michael Quentin Morton/Green Mountain Press, is available from Green Mountain, PO Box 348, Aylesford, Kent, ME6 9AP (tel 01732-220823, www.greenmountainpress.co.uk) at £20 plus p and p.
* The story of the Mortons, of Salendine Nook, is well-known but deserves re-telling.
* In 1558 Edmond de Morton fled there from Scotland to avoid religious persecution. They chose Salendine Nook because they were potters and it was the source of a special pure clay.
* The Morton barn, established a century later as a meeting house for Protestant dissenters, became the site of the present Baptist church.
* In 1862 "The Three Greenhorns", John Morton, his cousin Samuel Brighouse and their friend William Hailstone, established a settlement called Granville in Canada. It burned down and modern Vancouver arose in its place.
