Retired BBC documentary filmmaker and author Tim Slessor’s two months as the Practitioner-in-Residence at Chadron State College is nearing an end, but there are still two opportunities for area residents to hear him.
The first is tonight at 7:00 in the college Student Center while the second is next Wednesday at 7 pm in the Sandoz Center.
Tonight is Slessor’s second talk at the college. His first centered on similarities and differences between the U-S and Great Britain, but tonight’s is more personal as he talks about being part of the first expedition to drive from the English Channel to Singapore in 1955.
Land Rover donated two of its early models for the trip and Selssor’s understanding of public relations led the five Cambridge students planning the expedition to add a sixth member from rival Oxford.
Against the odds, the group succeeded after six months of driving that covered 16,000 miles and saw them shoot thousands of feet of film for the BBC, which made three documentaries.
Slessor wrote a book about the expedition, “First Overland,” which became a best-seller, in part because of the tie to the BBC films.
In his forward, Sir David Attenborough…generally considered the world’s foremost nature documentarian…calls the book “a classic.”
The Practitioner-in-Residency for Slessor…who taught at Chadron State for a year in the mid-1960s…is part of the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center Residency Program, a collaboration between the Center, the college, the Chadron State Foundation, and private donors.