author
Francis Yeats-Brown
1886–1944
Best remembered for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, he drew on an eventful military life to write one of the best-known memoirs of British India. His story also has a sharper edge, shaped by wartime adventure, captivity, and later political controversy.
1 Audiobook
Caught by the Turks
by Francis Yeats-Brown
About the author
Born in Genoa on 15 August 1886, Francis Yeats-Brown became an officer in the British Indian Army and later served in the Royal Flying Corps. During the First World War he was shot down and taken prisoner by the Ottomans, an experience that became part of the larger-than-life reputation surrounding him.
He is best known as the author of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, a memoir that won the 1930 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and brought him a wide readership. The book helped fix his name in popular military writing, and its success led to an enduring association with the world of the British Raj.
Yeats-Brown died on 19 December 1944. Alongside his literary success, his public admiration for Italian fascism later damaged his reputation, so he remains a figure remembered both for a vivid bestselling memoir and for the political views that complicated his legacy.