The decision of the British Government in 1912 to convert its naval ships from coal to oil set in motion one of the greatest periods of exploration of the twentieth century, the search for oil in the Middle East. In 1945, after a lull caused by the Second World War, exploration was set to expand again and twenty-one year old Mike Morton embarked on an empty troop ship bound for Palestine to begin his career as a geologist with the Iraq Petroleum Company.

Arriving in Jerusalem, Mike soon found himself surrounded by the Arab-Jewish conflict which led to the bombing of the King David Hotel. Then moving to Iraq, Mike and his colleague René Wetzel unravelled the geology of many parts of nothern Iraq. Their field work in the 1940s and 1950s has never been repeated and is still the foundation of our knowledge of Mesozoic outcrops today.

During a series of ground-breaking expeditions in southern Arabia between 1947 and 1954 , Mike travelled where the famous Arabian explorer, Wilfred Thesiger, had feared to tread: the mysterious Mahra country. He also visited other parts of the Aden Protectorates such as Shabwa, Beihan and the Bedouin well at Thamud, learning the true meaning of the saying, "the closer the bullets, the greater is the affection."

In 1954, Mike was posted to Oman where the first attempts to explore for oil from the north were overtaken by the so-called "Buraimi Dispute". He took part in Operation DEF, the "invasion of a foreign land”, when the interior of Oman was opened up to the modern world and oil was eventually found at Jebel Fahud, the "Leopard Mountain".

His story moves to Qatar, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi in the days before the oil boom. He was in charge of geological operations in Abu Dhabi when the massive Bu Hasa oilfield was discovered.

In 1971, Mike was appointed deputy leader of a Royal Geographical Society expedition and travelled to one of the remotest parts of Arabia, the Musandam Peninsula. Finally, in 1984, working for the Hunt Oil Company, Mike took part in the exploration of Yemen which led to the discovery of the first commercial oil in that country, the Arif field.

In the Heart of the Desert is the biography of Mike Morton written by his son. It describes an extraordinary world and a rich parade of characters: autonomous sheikhs and their fiercely independent tribes, nomadic Bedouins, colourful ex-patriots and a group of intrepid geologists driven by an oil company’s search for oil.

Mike struck a distinctive figure and, being red-haired with a sometimes fiery temper, the Bedouin called him Shaib al-Ahmar, “Angry Red Man”. The author presents a detailed and thoroughly researched account of his father’s life which culminates in the story of his own journey to southern Arabia and a poignant meeting of the present with the past.

For more details, see Green Mountain Press