author

A. H. W. (Austin Hubert Wightwick) Haywood

1878–1965

An army officer turned travel writer, he brought early 20th-century Africa to life in vivid, fast-moving accounts of long journeys, military service, and frontier adventure. His best-known book follows an ambitious route from Sierra Leone to Timbuktu and across the Sahara to Algiers.

1 Audiobook

Through Timbuctu and across the great Sahara an account of an adventurous journey of exploration from Sierra Leone to the source of the Niger, following its course to the bend at Gao and thence across the great Sahara to Algiers

Through Timbuctu and across the great Sahara an account of an adventurous journey of exploration from Sierra Leone to the source of the Niger, following its course to the bend at Gao and thence across the great Sahara to Algiers

by A. H. W. (Austin Hubert Wightwick) Haywood

About the author

Born in 1878, Austin Hubert Wightwick Haywood wrote under the name A. H. W. Haywood. Sources connected with his life and books identify him as a British army officer, including service as a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Garrison Artillery, and later as Inspector-General of the West African Frontier Force.

His writing grew out of that experience. Through Timbuctu and across the Great Sahara was first published in 1912 and recounts a journey from Sierra Leone to the source of the Niger, on to Gao, and then across the Sahara to Algiers. He also wrote Sport & Service in Africa and later co-authored The History of the Royal West African Frontier Force.

Haywood died in 1965. Readers coming to him now will mostly find a mix of travel narrative, military observation, and the very specific outlook of a British imperial writer of his time.