I am reading Bengal Lancer by F Yeats-Brown, published in 1930.
It is an account of his time in India from 1905 to 1914 serving in the infantry in Uttar Pradesh and the cavalry on the North West Frontier. A great success when it was published; it was turned into a film in 1935 starring Gary Cooper. Like many people in the 1930s FY-B was an unapologetic Fascist visiting Nuremberg in 1937 where he met Hitler. I have a first edition of Bengal Lancer (sic) so I cannot say if later editions carried Hitler’s approval. He said the film was one of his favourites and he had made it compulsory for all SS members.
One Christmas (1906?) FY-B goes to Benares where he meets Mrs Besant.
“As to Mrs Besant, she was all that I had imagined her to be in eloquence, dignity, sincerity; and Krishnamurti, whom the esoteric section of Theosophists believed was about to become the Saviour of the World, seemed a modest handsome, straightforward lad.”
She seemed familiar to me and I remembered reading about her in Jane Ridley’s biography of Lutyens (The Architect and His Wife). I could hardly have forgotten her as her long entry in the index attests. ELL is Edwin Lutyens and EL his wife, Emily. “Impossible client ELL” but then, as you may be aware, architects often find their clients obstinate; like beagles sometimes clients want their own way.
She was a remarkable woman who espoused many causes, or possibly she was a domineering, interfering old trout – I prefer to think the former. There is plenty about her varied activities on Wikipedia and quite a good Timewatch programme broadcast on the BBC on YouTube.
This has nothing to do with Annie Besant. We Got Annie is from the 1982 film, Annie.
A rattling good book; I particularly liked the part about fighting quails etc. He wrote two other books – not as good – but in one he escapes Istanbul dressed, for some reason, as a woman. Both might be worth a quick skim.