author
Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley
b. 1891
A British Army officer and co-author of a dramatic First World War escape memoir, he helped tell the story of a 450-mile journey to freedom after captivity in Turkey. His life bridged front-line service, wartime endurance, and the long afterlife of one remarkable survival story.
1 Audiobook
Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom
by Maurice Andrew Brackenreed Johnston, Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley
About the author
Born in 1891 in Sutton Bonington, England, Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley is chiefly remembered today as the co-author of Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom, written with Maurice Andrew Brackenreed Johnston. The book recounts an escape after imprisonment during the First World War and has kept his name in print for later generations of readers.
Available records also show that Yearsley had a substantial military career and later held the rank of brigadier. That combination of lived experience and military service gives his writing an unusual immediacy: it comes not from distant observation, but from someone who had endured war and its dangers firsthand.
He died in 1965. Although not a widely known literary figure, Yearsley remains an interesting author for readers drawn to wartime memoir, escape narratives, and firsthand accounts shaped by real experience.