THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

A tall, striking figure, with a bristling moustache, Gilbert Thorsby was a self-styled dandy and adventurer who published luridly detailed accounts of trips to Africa and the South Seas – Among the Blacks and To the Tropics – which were later exposed as elaborate fakes.  Chastened, Thorsby disclaimed his family fortune in favour of leading an hermetic life on the remote Fryup island of Vanadis.  His subsequent, unfinished manuscript, With the Fryoese, chronicling the lives and customs of the islanders in the early decades of the 20th century, is regarded as the seminal work on the subject.

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