From Calcutta to the snows of the Himalayas, Patrick French's Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer pieces together the story of a man who embodies all the romance and folly of Britain's lost imperial dream.
Soldier, explorer, mystic, guru and spy, Francis Younghusband began his colonial career as a military adventurer and became a radical visionary who preached free love to his followers.
Patrick French's award-winning biography traces the unpredictable life of the maverick with the 'damned rum name', who singlehandedly led the 1904 British invasion of Tibet, discovered a new route from China to India, organized the first expeditions up Mount Everest and attempted to start a new world religion.
'A story full of excitement and insight, humour and curiosity'
Michael Holroyd
'Breathtakingly accomplished'
Observer
'Beautifully written, wise, balanced, fair, funny and above all extremely original'
William Dalrymple
'Dazzling'
Niall Ferguson
'I found myself reading through the night. This is a rare gem of a book, one which so perfectly combines author and subject that it must set new standards for the future of historical biography'
Independent on Sunday
Patrick French is the author of Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, which won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of Literature W. H. Heinemann Prize, Liberty or Death: India's Journey to Independence and Division, which won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize, and India: A Portrait.
