Product details

Art.No:

93485

Author / Artist:

Davey, J. B.

Title:

Subtitles / Reproduction:

A Biography

Keyword:

Photographie - Reisephotographie, Reisen - Südamerika, Afrika

Binding / Picture Size:

Kart. m. OU.

Publisher:

British Empire & Commonwealth Museum Press

Place of publishing:

Bristol

Year of publication:

2005

Book Details / Size:

4°, 132 S., Text u. 122 Abb.

Condition:

Tadellos.

Description:

In 1904, on his first home leave from British Central Africa, Dr Jack Davey bought himself a camera. He decided to purchase first class equipment and bought a Zeiss Minimum Palmos 5x4 plate camera, together with developing and printing equipment with which to process the photographs he planned to take when he returned to his post as Government Medical Officer in Africa. Many years later, persuaded by his daughter and son-in-law. Jack wrote his memoirs of his experiences in Nyasaland - the name of the country having changed in 1907 and before it changed again on independence in 1964 to Malawi - up to the time he left in 1919. These two decisions - to buy a good camera and to write his memoirs - led to the production of a truly remarkable book, 'Nyasaland Days 1902 - 1919'. It is remarkable in that it not only tells the story of a medical practitioner and his work in Africa in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century, including the First World War, but it is most richly illustrated with over 120 truly excellent photographs. The text and the illustrations if published separately would make fascinating reading and viewing, but together, as in this book, they produce a volume of outstanding merit and interest.Jack Davey was born in 1875 at Coatham near Redcar, Yorkshire, son of the headmaster of the local Grammar School, the Reverend John Davey, who later became a rector of a small and impoverished parish. He was educated by his father in the family's large home until at the age of 14 he was sent to boarding school. On leaving school he started his medical training, first at Edinburgh and then at Middlesex Hospital in London, financing himself from a scholarship of #30 a year. When he qualified he volunteered for the South African War for a year as a medical officer with the Royal Army Medical Corps. He returned to Britain, disillusioned but with a hankering for wide open spaces, and successfully applied to the Foreign Office for an appointment as a Medical Officer in the British Central Africa Protectorate. Text engl.