Commissioned to find Livingstone by the New York Herald, journalist and adventurer Henry Stanley tracked him down in November 1871 to Lake Tanganyika, where he uttered the immortal words: "Dr Livingstone, I presume?"

Now a new television film, to be broadcast by ITV in the spring, has once again recreated the famous encounter, which for generations established the image of the intrepid white explorer opening up the dark heart of Africa.

Starring Nigel Hawthorne, of Yes Minister and The Madness of King George, as Dr Livingstone, with Aidan Quinn as Stanley, Forbidden Territory promises to tell the true story of the two men.

Following their meeting on the banks of the lake, where Stanley rescued Livingstone's party with supplies of food and medicine, the pair teamed up to explore the area.

After establishing that Lake Tanganyika could not be the source of the Nile, Stanley left for England where he cashed in on his adventures with the book How I Found Livingstone.

Despite his failing health, Livingstone refused to return with him and moved further into the continent's interior.

He died in May 1873 at Chitambo, in what is now Zambia, where his servants found his body kneeling by his bedside. After 32 years spent relentlessly exploring Africa, Livingstone left the continent for the last time and after a nine-month journey home was buried at Westminster Abbey.

A committed anti-slavery campaigner and Christian missionary, Livingstone, who was born into a poverty-stricken home on the Clyde, bequeathed a vast body of geographic, medical and social discoveries to the world and did more than anyone until Nelson Mandela to shape the West's view of Africa.

Stanley, who had left his native Wales for America at the age of 18, fought in the American Civil War on both sides, became a merchant seamen, then journalist, before going on to mount numerous African expeditions, including the discovery of the Congo and the ill-fated relief of Emin Pasa.

Despite being regarded as an arrogant American outsider by many in the British establishment, he was thanked by Queen Victoria for his services and was elected Liberal Unionist MP for North Lambeth in 1895.