Tim Jeal, a biographer and novelist, has died at the age of 81. He was known for his revisionist approach to historical figures, including Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingstone, and Robert Baden-Powell.
Jeal's work challenged long-held beliefs, notably suggesting that the famous journalistic phrase, "Dr Livingstone, I presume?", was almost certainly never spoken. This conclusion was based on the absence of the greeting in Stanley's original diary and Livingstone's journal, as detailed in Jeal's 2007 book, Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer.
His 1973 biography, Livingstone, offered a critical reappraisal of the missionary and explorer, while Baden-Powell (1989) defended the founder of the Boy Scouts movement against certain traditional accusations. Jeal's later work, Explorers of the Nile (2011), also re-evaluated figures like Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke.