Tim Jeal Books

Two sisters in Victorian England describe the summer they had no governess and thus were able to "entomologise" as much as they liked.

DIV An extensively revised edition of Tim Jeal's classic biography published to mark the bicentenary of the great explorer /div

'Exquisitely written and wonderfully readable - There are tears, laughter and filial tenderness on every page of Tim Jeal's perfect gem of a book.' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail An exquisite and moving portrait of a deeply eccentric father. Tim Jeal's beautifully nuanced memoir is by turns lyrical, poignant and gloriously funny. 'Jeal's prose is so sprightly, his interweaving of time-schemes so skilful, and his 'ordinary' story so touching that his book feels completely fresh - At its heart is an unusually engrossing account of parental oddity, marital resilience and filial complexity.' Andrew Motion, Guardian 'This is a marvellous book: funny, vivid, immensely touching and beautifully constructed.' John Preston, Evening Standard 'A pleasure to read: unpretentious, moving, full of jokes but also unobtrusively wise.' Anne Chisholm, Sunday Telegraph

R.S.S. Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scouts movement in 1908, was a British military hero during the Boer War and an author, actor, artist, spy, sportsman, and female impersonator. In this absorbing and humane account of Baden-Powell’s extraordinary life, Tim Jeal reveals for the first time the complex figure behind the saintly public mask, showing him to be a man of both dazzling talents and crippling secret fears.Reviews of the earlier edition:“Baden-Powell’s life story is as rich and engrossing as any of his memorable campfire yarns . . . a monumental biography.”—Zara Steiner, New York Times Book Review“In an age of good biographies, here is one that deserves to be called great . . . a magnificent book.”—Piers Brendon, Mail on Sunday“Jeal’s Baden-Powell is brave and self-seeking, devious and honorable, a domestic paragon whose repressed homosexuality fired his career, a soldier of genius who ultimately rejected militarism. . . . The story that Tim Jeal has to tell is epic, funny, and touching.”—Philip Oakes, New Statesman“Superb.”—Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books

Between 1856 and 1876, five explorers, all British, took on the seemingly impossible task of discovering the source of the White Nile. Showing exceptional courage and extraordinary resilience, Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, Samuel Baker, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley risked their lives and their reputations in the name of this quest. They journeyed through East and Central Africa into unmapped territory, discovered the great lakes Tanganyika and Victoria, navigated the upper Nile and the Congo, and suffered the ravages of flesh-eating ulcers, malaria and deep spear wounds. Using new research, Tim Jeal tells the story of these great expeditions, while also examining the tragic consequences which the Nile search has had on Uganda and Sudan to this day. Explorers of the Nile is a gripping adventure story with an arresting analysis of Britain's imperial past and the Scramble for Africa.

Perceptive, intelligent, stubborn and wilful, Clara is the only daughter of a Midlands manufacturer, still bereaved by the death of her mother, and jilted by a local aristocrat. When she meets a visiting missionary, Richard Haslam, she falls in love. Haslam is an innately good man: unlike many of his Christian brethren. After much wrangling with her father, Clara marries Robert and agrees to join him in Africa. Her journey is both terrible and awe-inspiring, and once she arrives at the village where Robert lives, she finds an enclave of huts, dust and flies. Slowly, Clara finds out more about Robert, that he has been married before, and more disturbingly, that the Church must come first. When tribal warfare overspills into the camp, Clara is rescued by the Cavalry, and finds herself embarking on a painful and heart-wrenching discovery.

First published in 1976, Until the Colours Fade was Tim Jeal's fourth novel, set in 1852 in a Lancashire mill town transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Disenfranchised cotton workers are restless, while landed gentry make uneasy common cause with newly wealthy manufacturers. When painter Tom Strickland encounters the combustible Magnus Crawford, lately returned from military service abroad, he is drawn into a web of local hatreds and intrigues that will lead to an epic conclusion at the siege of Sebastopol. 'First-rate - I was hooked from the first page... Jeal has a close sympathy for the passions and politics of Victorian Britain.' Times 'A long, meaty, intelligent, historical novel, full of qualities like surprise, expectation and its fulfilment, dramatic description and real understanding of the physical enormities of old-style campaigns like the Crimea.' Financial Times 'Jeal handles his ambitious range of settings with considerable craftsmanship.'TLS