Dr Livingstone's Lost 'Massacre' Diary
This event tells the electrifying story of Livingstone's journey into the heart of darkness.
Event description
Entry is free, but registration is required.
“ As I write, shot after shot falls on the fugitives on the other side of the river who are wailing loudly over those they know are already slain – Oh let thy kingdom come.”
140 years ago, in Darkest Africa, David Livingstone gave H.M. Stanley a harrowing account of a massacre he witnessed, in which slave traders slaughtered 400 people. Stanley’s report of the massacre in the world press changed the course of history.
This event tells the electrifying story of Livingstone’s journey into the heart of darkness, as recorded in his previously unpublished 1871 ‘massacre’ diary. A transatlantic team of Birkbeck scholars and U.S. spectral imaging scientists led by Dr. Adrian Wisnicki, Birkbeck, will reveal how they discovered and then recovered Livingstone’s original and near-illegible account – out of paper and ink, he wrote over an old copy of the London Standard with pigment made from crushed seeds.
Speakers
Dr Adrian S. Wisnicki is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck within the department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, and Assistant Professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Dr Debbie Harrison is an Honorary Research Fellow within the department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck, University of London, and is involved with the MA in Medical Humanities.
