Hailed as an explorer unrivalled since the Elizabethan era, Livingstone was also revered by the Victorians as a near saint - a myth in his own lifetime. This biography attempts to show that this myth of Livingstone was, in actual fact, a distortion of the truth and that the real man was far more remarkable - a man capable of ruthless cruelty as well as self-sacrifice, and dogged all his life by contradiction and failure; for Livingstone failed as a missionary, failed as a parent and failed on his search for the Nile's source.