In the course of his life he was an ornithologist, explorer, journalist, broadcaster, soldier, guerrilla, ethnologist, museum curator, archaeologist, documentarian, film-maker, conservationist and writer.
[2] In 1914, at the start of the First World War, the family sailed to the United Kingdom where Geoffry Harrisson joined the British army.
[3] With no toys to occupy them, their nanny Kitty Asbury entertained her charges with long country walks, which stimulated a great interest in nature.
[3] Harrisson's great aunt was Ada Cole who campaigned for humane conditions for British horses exported to the continent for slaughter.
[8] He continued his interest in ornithology, and supported by his housemaster, who allowed him to roam beyond the school grounds,[9] he wrote and published a book on birds of the area.
[2][6] The census later became a fixture of British birdwatching,[2] and brought him into contact with many of the leading figures of natural sciences when he continued his education at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
In 1937, Harrisson, with Humphrey Jennings and Charles Madge, founded Mass-Observation, a project to study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain.
He was attached to Z Special Unit (also known as Z Force), part of the Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD: a branch of the combined Allied Intelligence Bureau in the South West Pacific theatre).
[14] The recommendation for his Distinguished Service Order which was gazetted on 6 March 1947 (and dated 2 November 1946) describes how from his insertion until 15 August 1945 the forces under his command protected the flank of Allied advances, and caused severe disruption to Japanese operations.
In the 1950s and 1960s Tom and Barbara Harrisson undertook pioneering excavations in the West Mouth of the Great Cave at Niah, Sarawak.
Three films (amongst more made for British TV) record the Niah work[18] At the start of the Brunei Revolt in 1962, Resident John Fisher of the 4th Division of Sarawak called on the Dayak tribes for help by sending a boat with the traditional Red Feather of War up the Baram River.
This force reached some 2,000 strong, and with excellent knowledge of the tracks through the interior (there were no roads), helped contain the rebels and cut off their escape route to Indonesia.
[19] Following his retirement aged 55 from the curatorship of the Sarawak Museum, in 1967 Harrisson left for Ithaca, New York to start a three-year contract as senior research associate of the South East Program at Cornell University; his notes, maps, and journals for Central Borneo, 1947–1966, are archived there.
The title of his biography, The Most Offending Soul Alive, gives a flavour of the strong feelings he engendered, but he also had many admirers and is recognised as a pioneer in several areas.