Sean Connery is Scotand’s Greatest Living Scot. He was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh and named Thomas Sean Connery after his grandfather. His mother, Euphemia McBain “Effie” (née McLean), was a cleaning woman, and his father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and lorry driver. He was generally referred to in his youth as “Tommy”.

Connery’s first job was as a milkman in Edinburgh with St. Cuthbert’s Co-operative Society. He then joined the Royal Navy during which time he got two tattoos, of which his official website says “unlike many tattoos, his were not frivolous—his tattoos reflect two of his lifelong commitments: his family and Scotland. …One …reads “Mum and Dad,” and the other “Scotland Forever.”

Connery was later discharged from the navy on medical grounds because of a duodenal ulcer, a condition that affected most of the males in previous generations of his family. Afterwards, he returned to the co-op, then worked as, among other things, a lorry driver, a lifeguard at Portobello swimming baths, a labourer, an artist’s model for the Edinburgh College of Art, after a suggestion by former Mr. Scotland, Archie Brennan and a coffin polisher. The modelling earned him 15 shillings an hour, Student artist Richard Demarco who painted several notable early pictures of Connery described him as “very straight, slightly shy, too, too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis.”

Connery began bodybuilding at the age of 18 and from 1951 time trained heavily with Ellington, a former gym instructor in the British army. While his official website claims he was third in the 1950 Mr. Universe contest, most sources place him in the 1953 competition, either third in the Junior class or failing to place in the Tall Man classification.

One of the other competitors mentioned that auditions were being held for a production of South Pacific; and Connery landed a small part. While in Edinburgh, Connery was targeted by the notorious Valdor gang, one of the most ruthless gangs in the city. He was first approached by them in a billiard hall on Lothian Street where he prevented them from stealing from his jacket and was later followed by six gang members to a 15 ft high balcony at the Palais. There Connery launched an attack single-handedly against the gang members, grabbing one by the throat and another by a biceps and cracked their heads together. From then on he was treated with great respect by the gang and gained a reputation as a “hard man”.

Connery was a keen footballer, having played for Bonnyrigg Rose in his younger days. He was offered a trial with East Fife. While on tour with South Pacific, Connery played in a football match against a local team that Matt Busby, manager of Manchester United, happened to be scouting. According to reports, Busby was impressed with his physical prowess and offered Connery a contract worth £25 a week immediately after the game. Connery admits that he was tempted to accept, but he recalls, “I realised that a top-class footballer could be over the hill by the age of 30, and I was already 23.

Looking to pick up some extra money, Connery helped out backstage at the King’s Theatre in late 1951. He became interested in the proceedings, and a career was launched.

In 1957, Connery played Spike, a minor gangster with a speech impediment in Montgomery Tully’s No Road Back alongside Skip Homeier, Paul Carpenter, Patricia Dainton and Norman Wooland. He then played a rogue lorry driver Johnny Yates in Cy Endfield’s Hell Drivers (1957) alongside Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins and Patrick McGoohan.[27] Later in 1957 Connery appeared in Terence Young’s poorly received MGM action picture Action of the Tiger opposite Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom and Gustavo Rojo; the film was shot on location in southern Spain. He also had a minor role in Gerald Thomas’s thriller Time Lock (1957) as a welder, appearing alongside Robert Beatty, Lee Patterson, Betty McDowall and Vincent Winter, which commenced filming on 1 December 1956 at Beaconsfield Studios.

In 1958 he had a major role in the melodrama Another Time, Another Place (1958) as a British reporter named Mark Trevor, caught in a love affair opposite Lana Turner and Barry Sullivan. During filming, star Lana Turner’s possessive gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, who was visiting from Los Angeles, believed she was having an affair with Connery. He stormed onto the set and pointed a gun at Connery, only to have Connery disarm him and knock him flat on his back. Stompanato was banned from the set. Connery later recounted that he had to lie low for a while after receiving threats from men linked to Stompanato’s boss, Mickey Cohen.

In 1959, Connery landed a leading role in Robert Stevenson’s Walt Disney Productions film Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) alongside Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, and Jimmy O’Dea. The film is a tale about a wily Irishman and his battle of wits with leprechauns. Upon the film’s initial release, A. H. Weiler of the New York Times praised the cast (save Connery whom he described as “merely tall, dark, and handsome”) and thought the film an “overpoweringly charming concoction of standard Gaelic tall stories, fantasy and romance.”.[36] In his book The Disney Films, film critic and historian Leonard Maltin stated that, “Darby O’Gill and the Little People is not only one of Disney’s best films, but is certainly one of the best fantasies ever put on film.

He also had a prominent television role in Rudolph Cartier’s 1961 production of Anna Karenina for BBC Television, in which he co-starred with Claire Bloom.[38]

Connery as James Bond in Dr. No (1962)

Connery’s breakthrough came in the role of secret agent James Bond. He was reluctant to commit to a film series, but understood that if the films succeeded his career would greatly benefit. He played the character in the first five Bond films: Dr. No (1962), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), and You Only Live Twice (1967) – then appeared again as Bond in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and Never Say Never Again (1983). All seven films were commercially successful.

Sean Connery’s selection as James Bond owed a lot to Dana Broccoli, wife of Cubby Broccoli, who is reputed to have been instrumental in persuading Cubby that Sean Connery was the right man.[39][40] James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, originally doubted Connery’s casting, saying, “He’s not what I envisioned of James Bond looks” and “I’m looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stunt-man,” adding that Connery (muscular, 6′ 2″, and a Scot) was unrefined. Fleming’s girlfriend told him Connery had the requisite sexual charisma. Fleming changed his mind after the successful Dr. No première; he was so impressed, he created a half-Scottish, half-Swiss heritage for James Bond in the later novels.

Connery’s portrayal of Bond owes much to stylistic tutelage from director Terence Young, polishing the actor while using his physical grace and presence for the action. Lois Maxwell (the first Miss Moneypenny) claimed that, “Terence took Sean under his wing. He took him to dinner, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat. The tutoring was successful; Connery received thousands of fan letters a week, and the actor became one of the great male sex symbols of film.

If you like humorous fantasy about unrequited love then read Tempting Father Jack.

http://www.amazon.com/Tempting-Father-Jack-ebook/dp/B00C11ILX4

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/300218

One more recent Scottish legend is atually based on fact. It concerns the sinking of a ship laden with whisky.

The SS Politician left Liverpool on 3rd February, 1941, bound for Kingston, Jamaica and New Orleans. But gale force winds forced her to run aground off the Island of Eriskay,in the Outer Hebrides. Near the islet of Calvay, the ship broke in two. The crew were all unharmed and were looked after by the locals for a while.

Eriskay

When the locals learned from the crew of the “Polly” what the ship was carrying, a series of illegal, and later well-organised salvage operations took place at night, before the customs and excise officials arrived. The island’s supplies of whisky had dried up due to war-time rationing, so the islanders periodically helped themselves to some of the 28,000 cases (264,000 bottles) of Scotch malt before winter weather broke up the ship.

The men wore their womenfolk’s dresses on their “fishing trips”, to keep their own clothes from being covered in incriminating oil from the ship’s holds. Boats came from as far away as Lewis as news of the whisky spread across the Hebrides. No islander regarded it as stealing; for them the rules of salvage meant that once the bounty was in the sea, it was theirs to rescue.

However, this was not the view of the local customs officer. Charles McColl. He was incensed at the outright thievery that he saw going on. None of the whisky had paid a penny of duty, and he railed against this loss to the public purse. McColl whipped up a furore and made the police act.

Villages were raided and crofts turned upside down. Bottles were hidden, secreted, or simply drunk in order to hide the evidence.

McColl and the police caught plenty of locals red-handed, and they were sent to trial. On 26 April at Lochmaddy Sheriff Court. A group of men from Barra pleaded guilty to theft and were charged between three and five pounds. McColl was beside himself at the leniency of the sentence.

McColl continued on his crusade, and more men appeared in court, some of whom were sentenced to up to six weeks imprisonment in Inverness and Peterhead.

At sea, salvage attempts did not go well, and it was eventually decided to let the Politician remain where she was. McColl, who had already estimated that the islanders had purloined 24,000 bottles of whisky, ensured that there would be no more temptation. He applied for, and was granted, permission to explode her hull.

^{Recently, the Public Records Office released files which showed that the SS Politician was also carrying nearly 290,000 ten-shilling notes (145,000 pounds), which would be worth the equivalent of several million pounds at current exchange rates.}

^{To give an idea of how much that was worth, a corporal on full pay in the British Army received 35 shillings a week. The British government hoped that they would not get into circulation, but they started turning up at banks all around the world. Some sources suggest that these supplies were being sent to the colonies in case there was need of evacuation in the war.}

Suspicions only began to rise when an empty cash case was found abandoned in the hold of the ship. By June, the banknotes from the SS Politician were turning up in branches as far away as Liverpool. By mid July, a hundred or so had been tendered in Jamaica and almost two hundred in Britain.

By 1958, the Crown Agents reported that 211,267 notes had been recovered by the salvage company and the police and had been destroyed. A further 2,329 had been presented in banks in England, Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Malta, Canada, the US and Jamaica. Only 1,509 were thought to have been presented in good faith. That still leaves 76,404 banknotes which have never been accounted for. Their fate remains a mystery.

The legend inspired a novel by Compton McKenzie and an Ealing Comedy.

Poster for Whisky Galore!

For a light read – Tempting Father Jack

http://www.amazon.com/Tempting-Father-Jack-ebook/dp/B00C11ILX4

or

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/300218

Fed up with corrupt politicians and royalty,  the Spanish have taken up a new form of protest called Escrache. It is a type of demonstration in which activists go to the homes and workplaces of those who they want to publicly humiliate.

The term is alleged to have originated from Río de la Plata, Argentina. Benigno B. Lugones used the term in 1879, referring to a scam in which a lottery ticket  was presented to the winner who then had to pay for it, but for an amount which was inferior to what they had allegedly ‘won’ in the lottery^.

Another suggestion is that the term ‘Escrache’ might have come from the Genoese synonym for a photo  or scraccé. The word also means to make a portrait, or to smash someone’s face in.

The term is similar to the English word to scratch where the tickets used in a lottery scam were scratched to modify the number. In Italian scaracio means to spit.

The term came into wider use in 1995 by the human rights group HIJOS, when Carlos Menem (President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999) pardoned members of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional who were accused of human rights violations and genocide. Using chants, music, graffiti, banners, throwing eggs, street theater, etc, they inform neighbors of the presence of criminals in the neighborhood.

In Chile these actions are known as funa. In Peru they are known as roche and are often signed “El roche”.

By 2013, the term was in wide use in Spain to define the direct action protests of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca. (Pah) It means ‘The platform for those affected by mortgages.’ Recenlty, banks have reclaimed many houses, leaving the occupants homeless.

Until there a seismic shift in attitude by politicians, things will only get worse. Perhaps they should start caring for those who elected them. 

Want to read a funny wee tale of a priest and his housekeeper?

http://www.amazon.com/Tempting-Father-Jack-ebook/dp/B00C11ILX4

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/300218

Golf in its crudest form is thought to have its origins in the 1st century BC.The Romans played a game of paganica, in which participants used a bent stick to hit a leather ball stuffed with feathers.

However, this is disputed by other historians who cite chuiwan (“chui” means striking and “wan” means small ball) as the progenitor, a Chinese game played between the eighth and 14th centuries.

Chuiwan

A Ming Dynasty scroll dating back to 1368 entitled “The Autumn Banquet” shows a member of the Chinese Imperial court swinging what appears to be a golf club at a small ball with the aim of sinking it into a hole. The game is thought to have been introduced into Europe during the Middle Ages. Another early game that resembled modern golf was known as cambuca in England and chambot in France.

This game was, in turn, exported to the Low Countries, Germany, and England (where it was called pall-mall, pronounced “pell mell”)

Pall Mall

Some observers^, however, believe that golf descended from the Persian game, chaugán. In addition, kolven (a game involving a ball and curved bats) was played annually in Loenen, Netherlands, beginning in 1297, to commemorate the capture of the assassin of Floris V, a year earlier.

The modern game originated in Scotland, where the first written record of golf is James II’s banning of the game in 1457, as an unwelcome distraction to learning archery.To many golfers, the Old Course at St Andrews, a links course dating to before 1574, is considered to be a site of pilgrimage.

Golf is documented as being played on Musselburgh Links, East Lothian, Scotland as early as 2 March 1672, which is certified as the oldest golf course in the world by Guinness World Records.The oldest surviving rules of golf were compiled in March 1744 for the Company of Gentlemen Golfers, later renamed The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which was played at Leith, Scotland.

The world’s oldest golf tournament in existence, and golf’s first major, is The Open Championship, which was first played on 17 October 1860 at Prestwick Golf Club, in Ayrshire, Scotland.

Prestwick Golf Club

Now on sale – Tempting Father Jack – $0.99

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]]> http://alexthomasmahon.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/the-history-of-golf/feed/ 0 wearywanderer64 Image Image Image Image http://alexthomasmahon.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/the-rape-of-belgium/ http://alexthomasmahon.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/the-rape-of-belgium/#comments Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:38:40 +0000 wearywanderer64 http://alexthomasmahon.wordpress.com/?p=2365 ]]>

I’ve written many scenes based on facts, but none have saddened me more than the chapter about the eponymous ‘Rape of Belgium.’

This happened in Louvain, a Belgian city between Liege and Brussels. It was the subject of mass destruction by the German army over a period of five days from 25 August 1914.  The city itself fell to the German First Army on 19 August 1914 as part of the German strategy to overrun Belgium during the month of August 1914.

 On that date German units to the rear of the city were attacked by a Belgian force advancing from Antwerp. Panicked, German troops  withdrew to Louvain, which in itself caused confusion to German soldiers stationed in the city.  Shots were heard amid fearful cries that the Allies were launching a major attack.

Once it became clear however that no such Allied attack was underway or even imminent, the city’s German authorities determined to exact revenge upon Louvain’s citizenry, whom they were convinced that contrived the confusion that day.

Ruins of the library Catholic Library of the Unoversity of Leuven

On August 25, 1914, the German army ravaged the city of Louvain, deliberately burning the University’s library of 300,000 medieval books and manuscripts with gasoline, killing 248 residents,and expelling the entire population of 10,000. Civilian homes were set on fire and citizens often shot in the place they stood.  Over 2,000 buildings were destroyed and large amounts of strategic materials, foodstuffs and modern industrial equipment were looted and transferred to Germany. (There were also several friendly fire incidents between groups of German soldiers during the confusion.These actions brought worldwide condemnation.

Catholic University of Louvain

Already widely regarded as an unacceptable strategy internationally, the treatment of Louvain provoked highly critical press headlines (which routinely referred to German barbarism and ‘rivers of blood’) and caused great concern in neutral capitals.

The German retaliation ceased on 30 August.

However, not all historians agree that the such events were depicted correctly.

Historian Nicoletta Gullace wrote that “the invasion of Belgium, with its very real suffering, was nevertheless represented in a highly stylized way that dwelt on perverse sexual acts, lurid mutilations, and graphic accounts of child abuse of often dubious veracity,

In Britain, many patriotic publicists propagated these stories on their own. For example popular writer William Le Queux described the German army as “one vast gang of Jack-the-Rippers”, and described in graphic detail events such as a governess hanged naked and mutilated, the bayoneting of a small baby, or the “screams of dying women”, raped and “horribly mutilated” by German soldiers, accusing them of cutting off the hands, feet, or breasts of their victims^.

Whatever the truth was, such scenes of depravity, all too common in war, are difficult to write about without feeling depressed and sad about what ahd taken place there.

But if a writer wants to give their stories an authentic edge, then horrid scenes such as these must be included.

Here’s something lighter to read: Tempting Father Jack

http://www.amazon.com/Tempting-Father-Jack-ebook/dp/B00C11ILX4

or

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/300218

In Scotland, a new offence of Vicarious Liability came into force in January 2012. It is designed to deal with landowners and managers who turn a blind eye to employees committing offences against wild birds on their land.

Thanks to the new wildlife crime legislation targeting landowners, poisoning incidents fell from 10, involving 16 birds, in 2011 to three in 2012, according to the latest figures. But the RSPB warned that there were still concerns birds could be killed using other methods that are more difficult to detect.

The latest figures, released by the Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime (Paw) Scotland, showed that two buzzards and a golden eagle died through poisoning during the first year of the new legislation being in force.

One victim of  poison is the Golden Eagle – the most common national animal in the world, with five nations—Albania, Germany, Austria, Mexico and Kazakhstan—making it the national animal. It is also a common motif in the national symbols of countries that have not officially made it the national animal or national bird.

Albania

Egypt

Mexico

Among European countries, the Golden Eagle was the model for the aquila, the most prominent symbol of the Roman legions and more generally the Roman civilization that had such a powerful impact on Western culture;

Eagle of Roman Empire

This association of the Golden Eagle with Rome has also led to the adoption of similar symbols in other countries; for instance, the adoption of the related and physically similar Bald Eagle as the national bird of the United States was inspired by the conception of the United States as a modern reincarnation of the Roman Republic, a theme that recurs in other elements as well (including the prevalence of neoclassical architecture in American public buildings and the use of Roman terminology—such as naming the upper house of Congress.

Great Seal of the United States

The Golden Eagle uses its agility and speed combined with extremely powerful talons to snatch up a variety of prey, including rabbits, marmots, ground squirrels, and large mammals such as foxes and young ungulates.^[4] They will also eat carrion if live prey is scarce, as well as reptiles. Birds, including large species up to the size of swans and cranes have also been recorded as prey.

For centuries, this species has been one of the most highly regarded birds used in falconry, with the Eurasian subspecies having been used to hunt and kill unnatural, dangerous prey such as Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) in some native communities. Due to their hunting prowess, the Golden Eagle is regarded with great mystic reverence in some ancient, tribal cultures.

Facts:

Golden Eagles can grow to 33 to 38 in (84 to 97 cm) with a wingspan of 6 to 7.5 ft (1.8 to 2.3 m) and weigh6 to 15 lbs (3 to 7 kg.) They maintain territories that may be as large as 155 km² (60 sq mi) and are monogamous. Pairs may remain together for several years or possibly for life. Golden Eagles nest in high places including cliffs, trees, or human structures such as telephone poles. They build huge nests to which they may return for several breeding years. Females lay from one to four eggs, and both parents incubate them for 40 to 45 days. Typically, one or two young survive to fledge in about three months. Their average life span in the wild

Hopefully, the Golden Eagle will be as respected as it was in the past.

Something light to read:

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Your-Poison-Other-ebook/dp/B00AW9C0PC

While its larger cousin, the Golden Eagle, is revered as a national symbol in many countries, the red kite is seen as an outlaw. Its infamy was mentioned by Shakespeare when King Lear describes his daughter Goneril as a detested kite. He goes on to say, “When the kite builds, look to your lesser linen.” This was in reference to them stealing washing hung out to dry in the nesting season.

Under Tudor ‘vermin laws’ many creatures were seen as competitors for the produce of the countryside and bounties were paid by the parish for their carcasses. In the mid-15th century King James II of Scotland decreed that they should be ‘killed wherever possible.’

So it is no wonder that the red kite became extinct in Scotland in 1886.

The very first Scottish reintroduction was on the Black Isle, north of Inverness,

Black Isle

in 1989, when around 100 birds, from Scandinavia, were released. In 2007 30 birds were released on the outskirts of Aberdeen, and the last kites were released in Aberdeen in 2009, taking the total there to 101 birds. The figure increased to 214 nesting pairs across the country last year.

Despite the birds being protected, occasionally people take the law into their own hands. In the north of Scotland, illegal poisoning was hampering the reintroduction efforts. Farmers had labelled them a nuisance and a threat to livestock, particularly pheasants. The onset of spring and the arrival of the lambing season heightened such fears.

However, the RSPB state that red kites lack the power, strength and speed to take anything larger than a young rabbit, never mind a lamb. Besides that, they do not hunt mobile prey, but prefer to feed on meat scraps, earthworms, carcasses, frogs and the occasional mouse or rat.

Some Scottish farmers have listened to their advice and have established feeding stations on their sheep farms, which have become popular visitor attractions. Feeding stations exist on the Galloway Red Kite Trail and at Argaty Red Kites in Doune.

Doune

The Galloway Kite Trail (Opening times 2013 (01/01/2013 – 31/12/2013) has attracted an estimated £33m in visitor spending since its launch in 2003, which also demonstrates the contribution that these scavenger birds make to Scottish Tourism.

The Galloway Kite Trail

Red kites decorate their nest with unusual items such as soft toy racoons, mouse traps, toy lemurs, tennis balls, toy dogs, and a toy rats. This is all in addition to the usual gloves, wool and socks.

Red kite nest

Local primary schools choose names for the red kite chicks. There are around 75 chicks named by schools such as Echt Happy Chappie, Elmo, Professor Feathers and Kingswells Bullet.”

Facts and Figures

• Their wingspan stretches almost two metres and they typically weigh about 1kg (2-3lb).

• They start to breed at the age of two or three, and their eggs are usually laid in March, although first-time breeders might not lay until April.

• They typically lay between one and four eggs, each laid three days apart, and the incubation period is 31 to 35 days.

• When they hatch, the chicks can be quite aggressive and the larger chicks will peck at the younger chicks. This sometimes results in the youngest chicks dying, either from starvation, or from pecking.

• Red kites can live for up to 20 years.

Something light to read:

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Your-Poison-Other-ebook/dp/B00AW9C0PC

His analytical skills in solving crime is legendary, but who was the elusive Sherlock Holmes?

Step forward Joseph Bell, JP, DL, FRCS (2 December 1837 – 4 October 1911.)

He was a famous Scottish lecturer at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh in the 19th century. He was a great-grandson of Benjamin Bell, a forensic surgeon. In his instruction, Bell emphasized the importance of close observation in making a diagnosis. To illustrate this, he would often pick a stranger and, by observing him, deduce his occupation and recent activities. These skills caused him to be considered a pioneer in forensic science (forensic pathology in particular) at a time when science was not yet widely used in criminal investigations.

Arthur Conan Doyle

met Bell in 1877, and served as his clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Doyle later went on to write a series of popular stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, whom Doyle stated was loosely based on Bell and his observant ways. Bell was aware of this inspiration and took some pride in it. According to Irving Wallace (in an essay originally in his book The Fabulous Originals but later republished and updated in his collection The Sunday Gentleman) Bell was involved in several police investigations, mostly in Scotland, such as the Ardlamont Mystery of 1893, usually with forensic expert Professor Henry Littlejohn.

Bell served as personal surgeon to Queen Victoria whenever she visited Scotland. He also published several medical textbooks. Bell was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, a Justice of the Peace, and a Deputy Lieutenant.

Joseph Bell died on 4 October 1911. He was buried at the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh alongside his wife, Edith Katherine Erskine Murray, and their son Benjamin, and next to his father’s and brother’s plots.

David Livingstone, like Captain Kirk centures later, had one dream: “To boldly go where no man has gone before. In the former’s case, it was finding the source of the River Nile.

David Livingstone was born on 19 March 1813 in the mill town of Blantyre, in a tenement building for the workers of a cotton factory on the banks of the Clyde River under the bridge crossing into Bothwell, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He was the second of seven children born to Neil Livingstone (1788–1856) and his wife Agnes Hunter (1782–1865). Along with many of the Livingstones, David was at the age of ten employed in the cotton mill of H. Monteith & Co. in the village of Blantyre Works. David and his brother John worked twelve-hour days as “piecers,” tying broken cotton threads on the spinning machines. He was a student at the Charing Cross Hospital Medical School from 1838 to 1840 where his courses covered medical practice, midwifery and botany.

Livingstone’s birthplace in Blantyre.

Livingstone’s father Neil was very committed to his beliefs, a Sunday School teacher and teetotaller who handed out Christian tracts on his travels as a door to door tea salesman, and who read extensively books on theology, travel and missionary enterprises. This rubbed off on the young David, who became an avid reader, but he also loved scouring the countryside for animal, plant and geological specimens in local limestone quarries. Neil Livingstone had a fear of science books as undermining Christianity and attempted to force him to read nothing but theology, but David’s deep interest in nature and science led him to investigate the relationship between religion and science.When in 1832 he read Philosophy of a Future State by the science teacher, amateur astronomer and church minister Thomas Dick, he found the rationale he needed to reconcile faith and science, and apart from the Bible this book was perhaps his greatest philosophical influence.

Livingstone hoped to go to China as a missionary, but the First Opium War broke out in September 1839 and the LMS suggested the West Indies instead. In 1840, while continuing his medical studies in London, Livingstone met LMS missionary Robert Moffat, on leave from Kuruman, a missionary outpost in South Africa, north of the Orange River. Excited by Moffat’s vision of expanding missionary work northwards, and influenced by abolitionist T.F. Buxton’s arguments that the African slave trade might be destroyed through the influence of “legitimate trade” and the spread of Christianity, Livingstone focused his ambitions on Southern Africa.^[5] He was deeply influenced by Moffat’s judgment that he was the right person to go to the vast plains to the north of Bechuanaland, where he had glimpsed “the smoke of a thousand villages, where no missionary had ever been.”

The journeys of Livingstone in Africa between 1851 and 1873

After the Kolobeng mission had to be closed because of drought, he explored the African interior to the north, in the period 1852–56, and was the first European to see the Mosi-oa-Tunya (“the smoke that thunders”) waterfall (which he renamed Victoria Falls after his monarch, Queen Victoria), of which he wrote later, “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.”

Livingstone was one of the first Westerners to make a transcontinental journey across Africa, Luanda on the Atlantic to Quelimane on the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Zambezi, in 1854–56.Despite repeated European attempts, especially by the Portuguese, central and southern Africa had not been crossed by Europeans at that latitude owing to their susceptibility to malaria, dysentery and sleeping sickness which was prevalent in the interior and which also prevented use of draught animals (oxen and horses), as well as to the opposition of powerful chiefs and tribes, such as the Lozi, and the Lunda of Mwata Kazembe.

Preaching from a wagon.

The qualities and approaches which gave Livingstone an advantage as an explorer were that he usually travelled lightly, and he had an ability to reassure chiefs that he was not a threat. Other expeditions had dozens of soldiers armed with rifles and scores of hired porters carrying supplies, and were seen as military incursions or were mistaken for slave-raiding parties. Livingstone on the other hand travelled on most of his journeys with a few servants and porters, bartering for supplies along the way, with a couple of guns for protection. He preached a Christian message but did not force it on unwilling ears; he understood the ways of local chiefs and successfully negotiated passage through their territory, and was often hospitably received and aided, even by Mwata Kazembe.

Livingstone was a proponent of trade and Christian missions to be established in central Africa. His motto, inscribed in the base of the statue to him at Victoria Falls, was “Christianity, Commerce and Civilization.” At this time he believed the key to achieving these goals was the navigation of the Zambezi River as a Christian commercial highway into the interior. He returned to Britain to try to garner support for his ideas, and to publish a book on his travels which brought him fame as one of the leading explorers of the age.

Believing he had a spiritual calling for exploration rather than mission work, and encouraged by the response in Britain to his discoveries and support for future expeditions, in 1857 he resigned from the London Missionary Society after they demanded that he do more evangelizing and less exploring.With the help of the Royal Geographical Society’s president, Livingstone was appointed as Her Majesty’s Consul for the East Coast of Africa.

The British government agreed to fund Livingstone’s idea and he returned to Africa as head of the Zambezi Expedition to examine the natural resources of southeastern Africa and open up the River Zambezi. Unfortunately it turned out to be completely impassable to boats past the Cabora Bassa rapids, a series of cataracts and rapids that Livingstone had failed to explore on his earlier travels.

Burial site of Mary Moffat Livingstone in Chupanga, Mozambique.

The expedition lasted from March 1858 until the middle of 1864. Expedition members recorded that Livingstone was an inept leader incapable of managing a large-scale project. He was also said to be secretive, self-righteous, moody and could not tolerate criticism which severely strained the expedition and which led to his physician, John Kirk, writing in 1862, “I can come to no other conclusion than that Dr. Livingstone is out of his mind and a most unsafe leader“.^[9] The artist Thomas Baines was dismissed from the expedition on charges (which he vigorously denied) of theft. The expedition became the first to reach Lake Malawi and they explored it in a four-oared gig. In 1862 they returned to the coast to await the arrival of a steam boat specially designed to sail on Lake Malawi. Mary Livingstone also arrived along with the boat. She died on 27 April 1862 of malaria and Livingstone continued his explorations. Attempts to navigate the Ruvuma River failed because of the continual fouling of the paddle wheels from the bodies thrown in the river by slave traders, and Livingstone’s assistants gradually died or left him. It was at this point that he uttered his most famous quote, “I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward.” He eventually returned home in 1864 after the government ordered the recall of the expedition because of its increasing costs and failure to find a navigable route to the interior. The Zambezi Expedition was castigated as a failure in many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds further to explore Africa. Nevertheless, the scientists appointed to work under Livingstone, John Kirk, Charles Meller, and Richard Thornton did contribute large collections of botanic, ecological, geological and ethnographic material to scientific Institutions in the United Kingdom.

In January 1866, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar, from where he set out to seek the source of the Nile. Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke and Samuel Baker had (although there was still serious debate on the matter) identified either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria as the source (which was partially correct, as the Nile “bubbles from the ground high in the mountains of Burundi halfway between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria^- Livingstone believed the source was further south and assembled a team of freed slaves, Comoros Islanders, twelve Sepoys and two servants, Chuma and Susi, from his previous expedition to find it.

 

This house in Mikindani in southern Tanzania was the starting point for Livingstone’s last expedition. He stayed here from 24 March to 7 April 1866.

Setting out from the mouth of the Ruvuma river Livingstone’s assistants began deserting him. The Comoros Islanders had returned to Zanzibar and informed authorities that Livingstone had died. He reached Lake Malawi on 6 August, by which time most of his supplies, including all his medicines, had been stolen. Livingstone then travelled through swamps in the direction of Lake Tanganyika. With his health declining he sent a message to Zanzibar requesting supplies be sent to Ujiji and he then headed west. Forced by ill health to travel with slave traders he arrived at Lake Mweru on 8 November 1867 and continued on, travelling south to become the first European to see Lake Bangweulu. Finding the Lualaba River, Livingstone mistakenly concluded it was the high part of the Nile River; in fact it flows into the River Congo at Upper Congo Lake.

The year 1869 began with Livingstone finding himself extremely ill whilst in the jungle. He was saved by Arab traders who gave him medicines and carried him to an Arab outpost.^[11] In March 1869 Livingstone, suffering from pneumonia, arrived in Ujiji to find his supplies stolen. Coming down with cholera and tropical ulcers on his feet he was again forced to rely on slave traders to get him as far as Bambara where he was caught by the wet season. With no supplies, Livingstone had to eat his meals in a roped off open enclosure for the entertainment of the locals in return for food.

On 15 July 1871, according to Livingstone’s recently released original handwritten diaries, while he was visiting the town of Nyangwe on the banks of the Lualaba River, he witnessed around 400 Africans being massacred by slavers.The massacre horrified Livingstone, leaving him too shattered to continue his mission to find the source of the Nile.^[12] Following the end of the wet season, he travelled 240 miles from Nyangwe – violently ill most of the way – back to Ujiji, an Arab settlement on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, arriving on 23 October 1871.

Although Livingstone was wrong about the Nile, he discovered for Western science numerous geographical features, such as Lake Ngami, Lake Malawi, and Lake Bangweulu in addition to Victoria Falls mentioned above. He filled in details of Lake Tanganyika, Lake Mweru and the course of many rivers, especially the upper Zambezi, and his observations enabled large regions to be mapped which previously had been blank. Even so, the furthest north he reached, the north end of Lake Tanganyika, was still south of the Equator and he did not penetrate the rainforest of the River Congo any further downstream than Ntangwe near Misisi.

Livingstone was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London and was made a Fellow of the society, with which he had a strong association for the rest of his life.

Henry Morton Stanley meets David Livingstone

David Livingstone memorial at Victoria Falls

Livingstone completely lost contact with the outside world for six years and was ill for most of the last four years of his life. Only one of his 44 letter dispatches made it to Zanzibar. One surviving letter to Horace Waller, made available to the public in 2010 by its owner Peter Beard, reads: “I am terribly knocked up but this is for your own eye only, … Doubtful if I live to see you again ..

Henry Morton Stanley, who had been sent to find him by the New York Herald newspaper in 1869, found Livingstone in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on 10 November 1871, greeting him with the now famous words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” to which he responded “Yes”, and then “I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.” These famous words may have been a fabrication, as Stanley later tore out the pages of this encounter in his diary.Even Livingstone’s account of this encounter does not mention these words. However, the phrase appears in a New York Herald editorial dated 10 August 1872, and the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography both quote it without questioning its veracity. The words are famous because of their perceived tongue-in-cheek humorous nature: Dr. Livingstone was the only white person for hundreds of miles. Stanley’s book suggests that it was really because of embarrassment, because he did not dare to embrace him.

Despite Stanley’s urgings, Livingstone was determined not to leave Africa until his mission was complete. His illness made him confused and he had judgment difficulties at the end of his life. He explored the Lualaba and, failing to find connections to the Nile, returned to Lake Bangweulu and its swamps to explore possible rivers flowing out northwards.

David Livingstone died in that area in Chief Chitambo’s village at Ilala southeast of Lake Bangweulu in present-day Zambia on 1 May 1873 from malaria and internal bleeding caused by dysentery. He took his final breaths while kneeling in prayer at his bedside. (His journal indicates that the date of his death would have been 1 May, but his attendants noted the date as 4 May, which they carved on a tree and later reported; this is the date on his grave.) His two followers, Susi and Chuma on the morning of his death made the decision to remove the heart and prepare the body for carrying to the coast for subsequent shipping to England^[20]. Livingstone’s heart was buried under a Mvula tree near the spot where he died, now the site of the Livingstone Memorial. His body together with his journal was carried over a thousand miles by his loyal attendants Chuma and Susi to the coast to Bagamoyo, and was returned to Britain for burial. After lying in repose at No.1 Savile Row—then the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society, now the home of bespoke tailors Gieves & Hawkes— his remains were interred at Westminster Abbey, London.

Livingstone and slavery

“And if my disclosures regarding the terrible Ujijian slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together.” – Livingstone in a letter to the editor of the New York Herald.

Arab slave traders and their captives.

 

“We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer”.

Livingstone’s letters, books, and journalsdid stir up public support for the abolition of slavery;however, he became humiliatingly dependent for assistance on the very slave-traders whom he wanted to put out of business. Because he was a poor leader of his peers, he ended up on his last expedition as an individualist explorer with servants and porters but no expert support around him. At the same time he did not use the brutal methods of maverick explorers such as Stanley to keep his retinue of porters in line and his supplies secure. For these reasons from 1867 onwards he accepted help and hospitality from Mohamad Bogharib and Mohamad bin Saleh (also known as Mpamari), traders who kept and traded in slaves, as he recounts in his journals. They in turn benefited from Livingstone’s influence with local people, which facilitated Mpamari’s release from bondage to Mwata Kazembe.^[

 

A new statue of David Livingstone

Livingstone was also furious to discover some of the replacement porters sent at his request from Ujiji were slaves.

His reputation was rehabilitated by Stanley and his newspaper,and by the loyalty of Livingstone’s servants whose long journey with his body inspired wonder. The publication of his last journal revealed stubborn determination in the face of suffering.

He had made geographical discoveries for European knowledge. He inspired abolitionists of the slave trade, explorers and missionaries. He opened up Central Africa to missionaries who initiated the education and health care for Africans, and trade by the African Lakes Company. He was held in some esteem by many African chiefs and local people and his name facilitated relations between them and the British.

Livingstone statue, Edinburgh

Posthumous portrait of David Livingstone by Frederick Havill

The David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre celebrates his life and is based in the house in which he was born, on the site of the mill in which he started his working life. His Christian faith is evident in his journal, where one entry reads: “I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity.

Centre: 1 Mar to 24 Dec, Mon-Sat 10-5, Sun 12.30-5.

Tel. 0844 493 2207