From Blantyre to Westminster Abbey: neither Saint nor Failure

Abstract

Livingstone’s funeral brought popular feeling for the great British Victorian hero to fever pitch. The ‘missionary, traveller (and) philanthropist’ had, in the words of his tombstone in Westminster Abbey, been ‘brought by faithful hands over land and sea … for 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelise the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, to abolish the desolating slave trade of Central Africa.’ The feeling in the country was comparable to that for Winston Churchill at the time of his death.