Letters from Mexico

R.S.S. Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scouts movement in 1908, was a British military hero during the Boer War and an author, actor, artist, spy, sportsman, and female impersonator. In this absorbing and humane account of Baden-Powell’s extraordinary life, Tim Jeal reveals for the first time the complex figure behind the saintly public mask, showing him to be a man of both dazzling talents and crippling secret fears.

Reviews of the earlier edition:

“Baden-Powell’s life story is as rich and engrossing as any of his memorable campfire yarns . . . a monumental biography.”—Zara Steiner, New York Times Book Review

“In an age of good biographies, here is one that deserves to be called great . . . a magnificent book.”—Piers Brendon, Mail on Sunday

“Jeal’s Baden-Powell is brave and self-seeking, devious and honorable, a domestic paragon whose repressed homosexuality fired his career, a soldier of genius who ultimately rejected militarism. . . . The story that Tim Jeal has to tell is epic, funny, and touching.”—Philip Oakes, New Statesman

“Superb.”—Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books