[1] 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.

His father was an officer in the Royal Navy's Air Arm; consequently Tim 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, HMS Glorious and her two escorting destroyers, his mother took him back to her home country of Australia.

[5] At 18, after completing secondary education at Malvern College in Worcestershire, Tim chose to do his military service in the Navy, specifically in the Royal Marines Commandos.

[5] During his last year at Cambridge, he and a friend put together a six-man expedition: they aimed to become the first people to drive all-the-way-overland (in two early Land Rovers) from Europe to Singapore.

In subsequent years, as he became more experienced (and a presenter/director) he travelled the world and won several awards both in the U.K. and U.S., including a citation from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma for a five part-series on the American West.

The first, Lying in State, is a heavily researched polemic questioning Britain's Ministry of Defense for a series of nine “official” cover-ups and deceptions – ranging, for example, from the 20-year denial of Gulf War Syndrome to the true circumstances behind the loss of his father's ship back in 1940.

[5] In 2017 Tim, his grandson Nat George, Alex Bescoby, Leo Belanger, David Israeli, Therese-Marie Becker, Larry Leong, Silverius Purba and Marcus Allender planned a reverse trip of the original 1955-1956 expedition.