Download Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer eBook

by Patrick French

Patrick French Historical English

Download Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer eBook

ISBN:

0002157330

Author:

Patrick French

Category:

Historical

Language:

English

Publisher:

HarperCollins (September 1, 1995)

Pages:

440 pages

EPUB book:

1187 kb

FB2 book:

1584 kb

DJVU:

1227 kb

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Rating:

4.5

Votes:

952

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Sir Francis Younghusband was the last of the great imperialists-a dashing adventurer, who in 1903 single-handedly invaded . The 13-digit and 10-digit formats both work.

Sir Francis Younghusband was the last of the great imperialists-a dashing adventurer, who in 1903 single-handedly invaded Tibet.

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Patrick French is a writer and historian, born in England in 1966

Patrick French is a writer and historian, born in England in 1966. He 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 and, most recently, The World Is. What It Is: The Authorized Biography of . Naipaul, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and.

Patrick French’s award-winning biography traces the unpredictable life of the maverick with the damned rum name, who .

Following in Younghusband’s footsteps, from Calcutta to the snows of the Himalayas, French pieces together the story of a man who embodies all the romance and folly of Britain’s lost imperial dream.

Patrick French's biography of Francis Younghusband - & last great imperial adventurer' - is beautifully written, insightful and above all humane. His later years were devoted to boosting this form of spirituality by establishing popular movements in England, lecturing widely including in the US, running the Royal Geographic Society and supporting Indian independence. All of which one could easily ridicule.

Sir Francis Younghusband was the last of the great imperialists-a dashing adventurer, who in 1903 .

Sir Francis Younghusband was the last of the great imperialists-a dashing adventurer, who in 1903 single-handedly invaded Tibet, wiped out its entire army, and then became a mystic

Patrick French's biography of Francis Younghusband - & last great imperial adventurer' - is beautifully written, insightful and above all humane

Patrick French's biography of Francis Younghusband - & last great imperial adventurer' - is beautifully written, insightful and above all humane.

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer by. .

From Calcutta to the sws 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.

French is the author of several books including: Younghusband: the Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1994), a biography of Francis Younghusband; The World Is What It Is (2008), an authorised biography of Nobel Laureate .

Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1994). Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division (1997). Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land (2003).

Sir Francis Younghusband was the last of the great imperialists and a dashing adventurer. In 1903 he single-handedly turned a small diplomatic mission into a full-scale military invasion of the last unexplored country on earth, Tibet. Yet he subsequently became an outlandish mystical philosopher and an Indian nationalist. Admired by Bertrand Russell, Lord Curzon, H. G. Wells and John Buchan, Younghusband held the world record for the 300-yard dash, was The Times correspondent during the siege of Chitral, became the first European since Marco Polo to find a new overland route from China to India, and organized the early assaults on Mount Everest.In a life that provides a rare glimpse into the spirit of his times, Younghusband embraced and personified, without apparent contradiction, the two cultures of late British imperialism. He spent much of his early life as a leading player in the Great Game - the battle of wits for control over the uncharted territory of High Asia - and his presumed death as a spy in the Pamirs almost sparked off a war between British India and Tsarist Russia. But despite being a classic Edwardian, full of pomposity and repression, in the post-First World War era he led the way in religious, philosophical and sexual free-thinking.

Jarortr

Younghusband really was a creature of his time and this book provides a fascinating look into how the Victorians and Edwardians saw their place in the world

I read this book after reading about Mallory and the failed attempts to scale Everest in the 1920s and it was a great backgrounder

Talrajas

The book traces the life of one of most intrepid explorers of fin-de-siecle 19th century, Sir Francis Edward Younghusband (FEY).
FEY was a man of many talents : explorer, writer, athlete, spy, thinker and philosopher. Born to English parents in `Imperial' India, FEY spent his early years at Dharamshala where he came under the influence of his maternal uncle Robert Shaw. Shaw was a keen adventurer and trekker himself which left a deep impact on the young FEY.
FEY started his career as an official of the British Empire and because of his treks to China (Gobi desert) and within India (Rohtang Pass) he became recognised as an explorer. At the turn of the century, Tibet remained one of the last uncontrolled regions in the 'Great Game' between Russia and Britain (for increasing their respective influences in the Asian region). Curzon, afraid of Russia's growing influence over Tibet (later proven unfounded), decided to send an 'expedition' to Lhasa headed by Younghusband. (Curzon and Younghusband were very good friends). The expedition was actually a military adventure to assert British influence over Tibet. In this most celebrated event of FEYs life, he along with British troops trekked from Sikkim to Lhasa and signed the Treaty of Lhasa which was responsible for Tibet coming under British influence (till the Chinese took it over much later on).
In the post-1904 phase of his life FEY tried, unsuccessfully, to enter politics. However, this physically-resilient explorer turned into a philosopher after he had a near-fatal accident in Belgium. He also led the `probably' unsuccessful attempts over Mt. Everest in the early-1920s (`probably' because till date the mystery over whether George Mallory did reach the summit in 1924 before perishing to his death remains unresolved).
The author also discusses in detail FEYs relationship with his wife Helen and daughter Eileen. PF also uncovers an affair FEY had in the twilight of his life with Lady Madeline Lees.
The book is also interspersed with details of how the author, Patrick French retraces Younghusband's steps. In true `living in his shoes' style, the author traces the travels / exploits of FEY. PF travels to Dharamshala, China, Gobi Desert and Sikkim to get a feel of Younghusband's travels. The research done by French on events of more than hundred years ago is commendable and extremely detailed. He even details the number (67) and type of shirts FEY took with him on his 1904 expedition !
Patrick French has also recently written `Liberty or Death' which is a lucid and well-researched account of the Indian Freedom struggle.

hulk

Patrick French's biography of Francis Younghusband - `the last great imperial adventurer' - is beautifully written, insightful and above all humane. I say humane because at first glance Younghusband could easily be ridiculed - in his youth for a reckless jingoism that cost lives and embarrassed the British government, and in his later years for a brand of religious mysticism that was, well, bordering on insane. It is a tribute to French's understanding of his subject that he digs beneath these criticisms to bring us a deeply satisfying portrait of a surprisingly complex man.
Frank Younghusband's most pressing claim on history was that he led the British expedition into Tibet in 1904 - even at the time seen as being based on a flimsy pretext of stopping Russia from gaining control of central Asia. Some 2000 Tibetans were killed as the British force made its way into Lhasa. Younghusband forced a treaty on the 13th Dalai Lama pledging loyalty to the British empire. The Government in London found this deeply embarrassing and almost immediately repudiated the treaty. Younghusband himself was convinced of the threat Russia presented to British interests in India and central Asia.
But while the expedition created popularity and profile in England, it finished any chances of a senior career with the civil service. Younghusband served in India in a number of middle-ranking posts and wrote books about Tibet and his earlier exploits as an explorer in central Asia. In 1906 he played a bit part in the Jamison raid in South Africa - in the pay of The Times. Most importantly Younghusband thought about spirituality. Literally following a mountain top revelation in Tibet, he increasingly devoted his life to promoting a form of all-embracing spirituality which led in its silliest form to speculations about aliens living on a planet called Altair. His later years were devoted to boosting this form of spirituality by establishing popular movements in England, lecturing widely including in the US, running the Royal Geographic Society and supporting Indian independence.
All of which one could easily ridicule. But French brings life to his subject and a subtlety of understanding which makes the book absolutely engrossing. One reason is that Younghusband was a prolific letter writer - the India Office Library contains 600 "bulging" boxes containing his papers. Through these we see into the private mental world of Francis - his arid and rather sad marriage to Helen, and the relationship in his very last years with Madeline Lees - truly the love of his life. These insights allow French to paint a much deeper and satisfying portrayal of a complex man - a person of his time and place but also a complete iconoclast, some one who pushed against the establishment for most of his life. Remarkably, this is Patrick French's first book, written in his mid-twenties. He is a natural, a gifted writer with a fine sense of judgement. No sentence rings out of tune in the whole book. In short Younghusband is worth every one of its five stars. If the publishers have any sense they will issue a reprint soon. If not, readers should do everything they can to somehow find a copy of this wonderful biography.

porosh

Even more astonishing than the fact that Younghusband marched with bayonets to Lhasa, to convince Tibetans they must have no truck with the Russians, was the complete reversal of his political persepective a mere thirty years later. The result was the historical precedent of an arch imperialist striking camp to cross over to the opposition, becoming, in the process, a hero for Indian nationalists. Ironically the man responsible for the death of hundreds of Tibetans fighting for their freedom would today be a huge thorn in the side of China, had he survived to join their successors in their continuing cause. The contradictions in his character are beautifully and arrestingly captured by French, who has done a marvellous job of bringing this paradoxical enigma to life in a thoroughly entertaining manner. I can't believe this book is no longer in print. Books this good should never be out of print.

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