Quote

Born in 1910, Wilfrid Thesiger spent his childhood in Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, as it was then called, where his father was an important and much-admired British official.

— Michael Dirda

Sentiment: POSITIVE

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✓Similar Perspectives

I used to live in Ethiopia as a child, and I lived there when Haile Selassie was the emperor.

— Jack Kingston

I had a very peripatetic childhood, so I bounced around. Lived in Ethiopia until I was, like, three or four and then lived between Ireland and London.

— Ruth Negga

Shortly after I was born he emigrated to Durban, where members of my mother's family had settled at the turn of the century, and the rest of the family followed soon thereafter.

— Aaron Klug

He wasn't a great father. He was a great musician. That's always been a touchy one, and it will be until I can find the answer, but I don't know if there is one.

— Julian Lennon

All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like, as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.

— Flea

My mother, Evelyn, was an actress and singer, and my father, Jack, was an actor. My earliest recollection of my father is being taken to see him in a matinee.

— David Cassidy

My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.

— Sidney Poitier

✗Opposing Perspectives

I don't have memories of Ethiopia as a child. I didn't learn about Ethiopian culture until after I moved to New York and started meeting people from the Ethiopian community.

— Marcus Samuelsson

My parents never referenced Ethiopia that much, largely because of the circumstances under which we left. We left during a time of political upheaval, and there was a lot of loss that came with that, so my parents were reluctant to talk about those things. So I had, by and large, an American childhood.

— Dinaw Mengestu

Herbert, my father, was born in Britain but went out to Africa in his teens to join his father and built up an 18,000-acre ranch in what was then Northern Rhodesia, providing work for the locals. He was my hero when I was a boy.

— Wilbur Smith