R.S.S. Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scouts movement, was a British military hero during the Boer War and an author, actor, artist, spy, and sportsman. 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.

Tim Jeal, a highly acclaimed biographer and novelist, is the author of Livingstone, also published by Yale University Press.

"'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"