David Livingstone
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2013
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr David Livingstone was the Victorian equivalent of an astronaut - a man who ventured into the interior of Africa to report on territory that was wholly unknown to Europeans. In this programme, the explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell explains why he admires his predecessor. Matthew Parris chairs the discussion, assisted by Dr Sarah Worden of the National Museum of Scotland.
Livingstone went to Africa as a missionary but succeeded in making only one convert, who soon lapsed. Frustrated, he switched his focus to exploration, crossing southern Africa from east to west and back again. He discovered the Victoria Falls, but his attempts to reach the interior by going up the Zambezi were a disaster when he discovered that the rapids he had been warned about were impassable. On his recommendation, missionary families came out from England to settle in what is now Malawi but - as he should have anticipated - many of them died of disease.
Despite these failures, he was and is regarded as a hero. As a self-made man who put himself through university on his wages from working in a cotton mill, he embodied the Victorian can-do spirit. His map-making, natural history observations, facility with languages and sheer endurance in the face of overwhelming obstacles made him a formidable character. Above all, his legacy in helping to end the east African slave trade mean that he is still revered in Africa today.
Produced by Jolyon Jenkins.
First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2013.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the |
| 0:03.8 | podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC. |
| 0:08.6 | It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world. |
| 0:15.0 | What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism |
| 0:20.0 | and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines. |
| 0:23.7 | And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject |
| 0:28.3 | you might not even have thought you were interested in. |
| 0:30.2 | Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment, |
| 0:36.1 | you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.8 | Great Lives is a download from Radio 4. We hope you enjoy what you're about to hear. |
| 0:46.4 | We're recording this week's program on a date which is particularly significant for the |
| 0:51.0 | great life we're discussing. It's the 19th of March, which is the 200th anniversary |
| 0:57.7 | of the birth of a great British hero. When my guest, the explorer Colonel John Blashford Snell, leaves the studio, it will be to go to |
| 1:07.1 | Westminster Abbey for a memorial service for the person he's nominated. |
| 1:12.2 | John, tell us who. Dr David Livingston, scientific |
| 1:16.6 | investigator, doctor and missionary and explorer who was born on the 19th of March 1813. In a word and it can't be expressed in a word why |
| 1:30.0 | him remarkable he was a remarkable person in many, many ways. |
| 1:35.0 | He had a great deal of failings and he had a great deal of success. |
| 1:40.0 | But he is a remarkable personality in the history of the world. |
| 1:44.2 | And so are you. |
| 1:46.0 | John Blashford Snell made his name when in 1968 Emperor Hyley Salasia of Ethiopia |
| 1:51.9 | invited the British Army to send a team to explore and make the first |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.