“The marvelous John Humphries has unearthed another great character ignored by historians. The celebrated missionary-explorer Livingstone shares the bicentenary of his birth with the forgotten man of central African exploration—the Welsh mining engineer John Petherick, who went to Africa to look for coal. While Livingstone was idolized, the achievements of his contemporary from Merthyr Tydfil were buried beneath a mountain of acrimony and accusation. Was Petherick an ivory trader or slave trader on the White Nile? Did he abandon John Hanning Speke to his fate after Speke became the first European to set eyes on Lake Victoria? Whatever the verdict, in time served and distance covered, Petherick is worthy of a place in the realm of nineteenth-century heroic exploration. Humphries has pieced together the remarkable and riveting story of the man and his courageous wife Katherine, their incredible struggle against the wilderness, and Petherick’s tremendous fight to salvage his ruined reputation.”

Terry Breverton, author of The Welsh: The Biography