Tim Jeal | |
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 Publicity picture for Dulwich Festival 2006 | |
| Born | 27 January 1945 London |
| Occupation | novelist, biographer |
| Period | 1960s– |
| Genre | fiction; biography |
| Subject | notable Victorian men |
| Notable works | Baden-Powell (book) |
John Julian Timothy Jeal, known as Tim Jeal (born 27 January 1945), is a British biographer of notable Victorians and is also a novelist. His publications include a memoir and biographies of David Livingstone (1973), Lord Baden-Powell (1989), and Sir Henry Morton Stanley (2007).
Tim Jeal was born in London, 27 January 1945 to civil servant Clifford Freeman Jeal and Norah Margaret Sabine, [1] daughter of Sir Thomas Edward Sabine Pasley, 3rd Baronet, and Constance Wilmot Annie Hastings, daughter of the 14th Earl of Huntingdon. Jeal was educated at Westminster School, London, and Christ Church, Oxford. [2] Clifford Jeal, about whom his son published a memoir in 2004, was a Christian mystic and follower of the Anglican Order Of The Cross fellowship and as such practised pacifism and vegetarianism. [3]
Jeal is married to Joyce Jeal and they have three daughters. [4]
From 1966 to 1970, he worked for BBC Television in the features group. [5]
Jeal has been writing books since the 1960s, for London and New York-based publishers. Although most of his works are fictional, he is best known for his biographies. [4]
His biography, Livingstone (1973), based on private letters, diaries and archives, was the first to describe the explorer/missionary's faults and failings and to reveal the man behind the icon. It became the basis for a BBC TV documentary and a film for the Discovery Channel. [6] Livingstone has never been out of print since first publication in 1973 and in 2013 was reissued in a revised and expanded edition by Yale University Press.
In Baden-Powell (1989), Jeal offers a revisionist account of Lieutenant-General The 1st Baron Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts, restoring his reputation which had deteriorated during the 20th century. [7] However, Jeal also speculated that Lord Baden-Powell was a homosexual, even a repressed one, and this sparked a great deal of attention in the popular press culminating in scouting organisations reissuing an earlier biography of Baden-Powell by William Hillcourt to dilute attention and sales of Jeal's book. [8] In 1995, Jeal's book was the basis for a TV documentary in the Channel 4 series "Secret Lives" entitled Lord Baden-Powell: The Boy Man.
The 2007 biography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley was a revisionist account that showed Stanley in a more sympathetic light. [9] [10] Professor John Carey in The Sunday Times accepted that Jeal's 'ardent, intricate defence of a man history has damned' had been successful, and concluded: 'Anyone who, after reading this book, imagines they would have behaved better than Stanley, if faced with the same dangers, must have a vivid imagination.' [11]
Tim Gardam said in The Observer that Jeal had 'fulfilled a mission to rehabilitate one of the most complex heroes of Victorian Britain'. [12] Kevin Rushby in The Guardian said he was 'aware of the dangers of revisionism' and doubted that Stanley was as innocent as Jeal argued. While calling Stanley 'an awesome piece of scholarship executed with page-turning brio,' he expressed doubt that it would be the 'last word on Henry Morton Stanley.' [13] In The Washington Post , Jason Roberts wrote of '...this commanding, definitive biography' being 'an unalloyed triumph...'; [14] and in the New York Times Book Review , Paul Theroux described it as 'the most felicitous, the best informed, the most complete and readable [biography of Stanley]'. [15]
Tim Jeal had unique access to the massive Stanley collection in the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Brussels and saw many letters, diaries and other documents (including correspondence between Stanley and King Leopold II of the Belgians) unseen by previous biographers. The book had its detractors. Kenyan law professor Makau Mutua said "If Jeal's attempt was the resurrection of a humane Stanley, then I must judge him a complete failure," going on to suggest that "the author should have set aside any biased personal agendas and let history speak for itself. Instead, Jeal writes a political book in defence of a historical monster." [16]
Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure (2011) is about the search for the source of the Nile by John Hanning Speke, James Augustus Grant, Richard Francis Burton, Samuel White Baker, Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingstone and many others from 1856-1878. It is particularly focused on John Hanning Speke, seeking to restore his reputation, who is credited with unraveling the mystery of the source. Jeal has pitched the book as an update to Alan Moorehead's The White Nile. [17]
The Congo River, formerly also known as the Zaire River, is the second-longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the third-largest river in the world by discharge volume, following the Amazon and Ganges rivers. It is the world's deepest recorded river, with measured depths of around 220 m (720 ft). The Congo-Lualaba-Chambeshi River system has an overall length of 4,700 km (2,900 mi), which makes it the world's ninth-longest river. The Chambeshi is a tributary of the Lualaba River, and Lualaba is the name of the Congo River upstream of Boyoma Falls, extending for 1,800 km (1,100 mi).
Sir Henry Morton Stanley was a Welsh-American explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of Central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. Besides his discovery of Livingstone, he is mainly known for his search for the sources of the Nile and Congo rivers, the work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of the Belgians which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1897, and served in Parliament as a Liberal Unionist member for Lambeth North from 1895 to 1900.
David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, and an explorer in Africa. Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century Moffatt missionary family. Livingstone came to have a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion. As a result, Livingstone became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.
Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the world-wide Scout Movement, and founder, with his sister Agnes, of the world-wide Girl Guide/Girl Scout Movement. Baden-Powell authored the first editions of the seminal work Scouting for Boys, which was an inspiration for the Scout Movement.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar, and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, Burton spoke 29 languages.
Captain John Hanning Speke was an English explorer and officer in the British Indian Army who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and was the first European to reach Lake Victoria.
Mountains of the Moon is a legendary mountain or mountain range in east Africa at the source of the Nile River. Various identifications have been made in modern times, the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo being the most celebrated.
The geography of North Africa has been reasonably well known among Europeans since classical antiquity in Greco-Roman geography. Northwest Africa was known as either Libya or Africa, while Egypt was considered part of Asia.
Baden-Powell is a 1989 biography of the 1st Baron Baden-Powell by Tim Jeal. Tim Jeal's work, researched over five years, was first published by Hutchinson in the UK and Yale University Press. It was reviewed by The New York Times. James Casada wrote in a review for Library Journal that it is "a balanced, definitive assessment which so far transcends previous treatments as to make them almost meaningless".
Kenneth McLaren DSO, (1860–1924) was a Major in the 13th Hussars regiment of the British Army. After his military service he assisted with the growth of the Scouting movement founded by his friend Robert Baden-Powell.
Nyangwe is a town on the right bank of the Lualaba River, in the Maniema Province in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the second half of the 19th century, it was an important Swahili–Arab hub for trade goods like ivory, gold, iron and slaves, remaining one of the main slave trading centres until the Congo Arab war.
The Nile is a 2004 BBC Television documentary that tells the history and natural history of the Nile.
Scouting for Boys: A handbook for instruction in good citizenship is a book on Boy Scout training, published in various editions since 1908. Early editions were written and illustrated by Robert Baden-Powell with later editions being extensively rewritten by others. The book was originally a manual for self-instruction in observation, tracking and woodcraft skills as well as self-discipline and self-improvement, about the British Empire and duty as citizens with an eclectic mix of anecdotes and unabashed personal observations and recollections. It is pervaded by a degree of moral proselytizing and references to the author's own exploits. It is based on his boyhood experiences, his experience with the Mafeking Cadet Corps during the Second Boer War at the siege of Mafeking, and on his experimental camp on Brownsea Island, England.
Between 1874 and 1877 Henry Morton Stanley traveled Central Africa east to west, exploring Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and the Lualaba and Congo rivers. He covered 7,000 miles (11,000 km) from Zanzibar in the east to Boma at the mouth of the Congo in the west. The expedition resolved several open questions concerning the geography of Central Africa, including identifying the source of the Nile, which he proved was not the Lualaba and is in fact the source of the Congo River.
Baden Fletcher Smyth Baden-Powell, was a military aviation pioneer, and President of the Royal Aeronautical Society from 1900 to 1907.
Sidi Mubarak Bombay, Mbarak Mombée , was a waYao explorer and guide, who participated in numerous expeditions by 19th century British explorers to East Africa.
Roy C Bridges was a noted historian the main focus of whose academic work was the British institutions and personnel which were established in East Africa in the middle years of the nineteenth century. He was Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen where he taught from 1964 to 1997. From 2002 to 2008 he was the President of the Hakluyt Society. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Historical Society.
The Simiyu River is a river located in Simiyu Region and Arusha Region, Tanzania. It flows into Lake Victoria in the African Great Lakes region. As one of the six main inlets to Lake Victoria, it forms part of the upper headwaters of the Nile. The Simiyu Region is named after the river.
Eugène Maizan was a French Naval lieutenant and explorer, possibly the first European to penetrate East Africa and the first to enter tropical Africa from Zanzibar. In 1844-1845 Maizan reached as far as the district of Dege la Mhora, on the Uzaramo plateau about 80-150 kilometers from the coast, where he was seized by Zaramo tribesmen under Hembé, the son of Chief Mazungera, and bound to a calabash tree before being tortured, mutilated and murdered. Hembé amputated Maizan's limbs and sliced off his genitals while still alive before beheading him. Hembé later claimed to be acting on the orders of Arab ivory traders.
Edward James Glave was an English travel writer and journalist, known for his multiple expeditions in the Congo Free State
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