T. Cullen Young was a Livingstonia missionary, who first set sail for Malawi in 1904. Hw was influential in education, and the Africanisation of the church. Later on, he developed an interest in African languages, culture and history, writing prolifically on these subjects, and may now be read as a documentalist of this particular period of missionary history. Cullen Young’s studies of the Tumbuka for example, provided the first published record of the ethnography and history of northern Malawi. This studies provides an overview of the man and his work, placing the thinking of this particular writer into historical and social context. It exploes the oft-neglected areas of common interest between missionaries and anthropologists. It comments on Cullen Young’s historical, educational and literary contributions, and his political concerns, illustrating how Cullen Young’s broader concerns with African culture had political implications in the pre- and post-independence eras. The biography further explores the relationship between its subject and the young Hastings Kamuzu Banda, and their subsequent collaborative work.