Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer. Tim Jeal. Faber and Faber. [pounds sterling]25.00. xix + 570 pages. ISBN 978-0-571-22102-8. Biographers often claim to have uncovered the 'real' person behind the legend but in this case Mr Jeal has done just this. H.M. Stanly was, until now, one of the most misunderstood characters from the Victorian era.

The author has had access to hitherto unused manuscripts and has used these to good effect. He shows how this 'illegitimate workhouse boy' born John Rowland, became one of the century's greatest explorers--perhaps the single greatest explorer--of Africa with his journeys on Lake Victoria and the Congo. He shows how the picture of him painted in the 1990s has skewed the real man with its allegations of cruelty and association with Leopold II. Stanley spent sixteen years in Africa and did much to help the continent. 'One day', he hopes, 'Henry Morton Stanley will no longer be a scapegoat for the post-colonial guilt of successive generations'. If that day comes it will be in no small part because of this biography. (R.G.C.)

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