This is the life of Sir Samuel Baker, who explored the sources of the Nile in the time of Livingstone, Burton and Speke, discovering Lake Albert Nyanza, and later ruled the Sudan for Egypt before Charles Gordon and the Mahdi. It also says much of the life of his wife Florence, apparently a Hungarian, whom he is said to have bought in a Turkish slave market (or possibly stolen after being outbid for her in the auction), who traveled with him through his African adventures and quietly married him during an interval in England. The author is perhaps more sympathetic to Victorian colonialism than most serious scholars nowadays, but Baker was, at least, well-intentioned, doing his (brave but inadequate) best to suppress slavery in the Sudan and improve conditions generally.
The aspect of the story most likely to be controversial is the author's open sympathy for Samuel's brother Valentine, regarded as a brilliant cavalryman but cashiered after being convicted of attempt rape of a brother officer's sister in a railway carriage. Trow suggests the woman was deluded and the policeman who testified was corrupt, which I think very unlikely. Valentine was richer and more influential (a friend of the Prince of Wales) so why would a corrupt policeman side with the victim? Queen Victoria sided with the woman, and I think rightly so, though Trow makes nasty remarks about the "vengeful" old queen. Even Valentine himself admitted to doing something, though denying he went a far as the woman said, and Samuel commented that it was hard to explain away Valentine's trousers (which were apparently unbuttoned). ( )