Tim Slessor

Timothy Paul Slessor (1 October 1931 – 5 April 2026) was a British filmmaker, presenter, traveller and author. He is best known as the scribe and assistant cameraman for the 1955–1956 Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition from London to Singapore. Graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in Geography, he joined the BBC in 1957 and for more than 30 years worked with the BBC making documentaries all over the world, receiving a Peabody award.

Slessor ended his BBC career as deputy head of its features documentary department and subsequently turned to freelance work – writing for various magazines and producing for National Geographic.

At the age of 87, Slessor and others in one of the original Land Rovers, re-created the first London to Singapore trip by doing it in reverse; they started from Singapore on 25 August 2019 on a trip called the Last Overland.

Life and career

Early life and education Tim Slessor was born in Gosport, Hampshire, England on 1 October 1931. His father was an officer in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm; consequently Slessor spent most of his pre-war boyhood in Malta, the then home base of the RN's Mediterranean fleet. But in June 1940, when his father (along with over 1,500 others) was lost in the sinking of the carrier Glorious and her two escorting destroyers, his mother took him back to her home country of Australia. In late 1945, with the War over, he and his mother eventually returned to the United Kingdom.

He attended Cambridge University in 1952, and graduated in 1955 with a degree in Geography.