The Lives of a Bengal Lancer

Francis Yeats-Brown (1886-1944) was a British author and British Indian Army officer best known for his memoir The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1930), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was adapted into a successful 1935 Hollywood film starring Gary Cooper. Born in Genoa, Italy, to a British consul father, he served in India from 1905, fought in World War I including as a Royal Flying Corps pilot earning the Distinguished Flying Cross, and later wrote other works like Caught by the Turks (1919) and Lancer at Large (1936), blending military autobiography with interests in yoga and European politics.