Francis Younghusband
Encyclopedia
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...

 Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, KCSI
Order of the Star of India
The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1861. The Order includes members of three classes:# Knight Grand Commander # Knight Commander # Companion...

, KCIE
Order of the Indian Empire
The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1878. The Order includes members of three classes:#Knight Grand Commander #Knight Commander #Companion...

 (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942, Dorset) was a British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 officer, explorer, and spiritual writer. He is remembered chiefly for his travels in the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...

 and Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

; especially the 1904 British expedition
British expedition to Tibet
The British expedition to Tibet during 1903 and 1904 was an invasion of Tibet by British Indian forces, whose mission was to establish diplomatic relations and trade between the British Raj and Tibet...

 to Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

, which he led, during which a massacre of Tibetans occurred, and for his writings on Asia and foreign policy. Younghusband held positions including British commissioner to Tibet and President of the Royal Geographical Society
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...

.

Early life

Francis Younghusband was born in 1863 at Murree
Murree
Murree city is a popular hill station and a summer resort, especially for the residents of Rawalpindi/Islamabad, and for the cities of the province of Punjab, Pakistan...

, British India (now Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

) to a British military family, being the second son of Major-General John W. Younghusband and his wife Clara Jane Shaw. Clara's brother, Robert Shaw, was a noted explorer of Central Asia
Central Asia
Central Asia is a core region of the Asian continent from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north...

.

As an infant, Francis was taken to live in England by his mother. When Clara returned to India in 1867 she left her son in the care of two austere and strictly religious aunts. In 1870 his mother and father returned to England and reunited the family. In 1876 at age thirteen, Francis entered Clifton College
Clifton College
Clifton College is a co-educational independent school in Clifton, Bristol, England, founded in 1862. In its early years it was notable for emphasising science in the curriculum, and for being less concerned with social elitism, e.g. by admitting day-boys on equal terms and providing a dedicated...

, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

. In 1881 he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is a British Army officer initial training centre located in Sandhurst, Berkshire, England...

 and in 1882 he was commissioned as a subaltern
Subaltern (rank)
A subaltern is a chiefly British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning "subordinate," subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant. In the British Army the senior subaltern rank was...

 in the 1st King's Dragoon Guards
1st King's Dragoon Guards
The 1st King's Dragoon Guards was a cavalry regiment in the British Army. The regiment was formed in 1685 as The Queen's Regiment of Horse, named in honour of Queen Mary, consort of King James II. It was renamed The King's Own Regiment of Horse in 1714 in honour of George I...

.

Military career

In 1886-1887, on leave from his regiment, Younghusband made an expedition through Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

, crossing the Gobi Desert
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...

 and pioneering a route from Kashgar
Kashgar
Kashgar or Kashi is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture which has an area of 162,000 km² and a population of approximately...

 and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 through the uncharted Mustagh Pass
Mustagh Pass
The Mustagh Pass or Muztagh Pass is a pass across the Baltoro Muztagh range in the Karakorams which includes K2, the world's second highest mountain. The crest of the Baltoro Muztagh marks the present border between Pakistani and Chinese territory....

. For this achievement he was elected the youngest member of the Royal Geographical Society
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...

 and received the society's gold medal.

In 1889, the year he made Captain, Younghusband was dispatched with a small escort of Gurkha
Gurkha
Gurkha are people from Nepal who take their name from the Gorkha District. Gurkhas are best known for their history in the Indian Army's Gorkha regiments, the British Army's Brigade of Gurkhas and the Nepalese Army. Gurkha units are closely associated with the kukri, a forward-curving Nepalese knife...

 soldiers to investigate an uncharted region north of Ladakh
Ladakh
Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...

, where raiders from Hunza
Hunza (princely state)
Hunza was a princely state in the northernmost part of the Northern Areas of Pakistan until 1974. The state was also known as Kanjut. The state bordered the Gilgit Agency to the south, the former princely state of Nagar to the east, China, to the north and Afghanistan to the northwest. The state...

 had disrupted trade between Yarkand
Yarkand
Yarkant County , is a county in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, located on the southern rim of the Taklamakan desert in the Tarim Basin. It is one of 11 counties administered under Kashgar Prefecture...

 and India the previous year. Whilst encamped in the valley of the Yarkand River
Yarkand River
The Yarkand River is a river in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of western China. It is one of the headstreams of the Tarim River. It is approximately 970 km in length....

, Younghusband received a messenger at his camp, inviting him to dinner with Captain Bronislav Grombchevsky, his Russian counterpart in "The Great Game
The Great Game
The Great Game or Tournament of Shadows in Russia, were terms for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813...

". Younghusband accepted the invitation to Grombchevsky's camp, and after dinner the two rivals talked into the night, sharing brandy and vodka, and discussing the possibility of a Russian invasion of British India. Grombchevsky impressed Younghusband with the horsemanship skills of his Cossack
Cossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...

 escort, and Younghusband impressed Grombchevsky with the rifle drill of his Gurkhas. After their meeting in this remote frontier region, Grombchevsky resumed his expedition in the direction of Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

 and Younghusband continued his exploration of the Karakoram
Karakoram
The Karakoram, or Karakorum , is a large mountain range spanning the borders between Pakistan, India and China, located in the regions of Gilgit-Baltistan , Ladakh , and Xinjiang region,...

.

In 1890 Younghusband was sent on a mission to Chinese Turkestan, accompanied by George Macartney as interpreter. He spent the winter in Kashgar
Kashgar
Kashgar or Kashi is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture which has an area of 162,000 km² and a population of approximately...

, where he left Macartney as British consul. In 1891 he returned to India through the Pamirs. At Bozai Gumbaz in the Little Pamir
Little Pamir
The Little Pamir is a broad U-shaped grassy valley or pamir in the eastern part of the Wakhan in north-eastern Afghanistan...

 he encountered Russian soldiers, who forced him to leave the area. This was one of the incidents which provoked the Hunza-Nagar Campaign.

During his service in Kashmir, he wrote a book called 'Kashmir' at the request of Edward Molyneux
Edward Molyneux
Edward Henry Molyneux was a British fashion designer whose fashion house in Paris was in operation from 1919 until 1950.- Overview :Born in London to Justin Molyneux and Lizzy Kenny, Edward Molyneux attended Beaumont College, a Roman Catholic preparatory school...

. Younghusband's descriptions went hand in hand with his paintings of the Valley by Molyneux. In the book, Younghusband declared his immense admiration of the natural beauty of Kashmir and its history.

In 1890, Younghusband transferred to the Indian Political Service
Indian Political Service
The Indian Political Service was a department of the Indian Civil Service during the British Raj.The political officers assigned to the service - many of whom were British Army and British Indian Army officers on secondment - were responsible for the civil administration of frontier districts, and...

. He served as a political officer on secondment from the British Army.

The Great Game, between Britain and Russia, continued beyond the turn of the century. Younghusband, among other explorers such as Sven Hedin
Sven Hedin
Sven Anders Hedin KNO1kl RVO was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, and travel writer, as well as an illustrator of his own works...

, Nikolai Przhevalsky
Nikolai Przhevalsky
Nikolai Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky and Prjevalsky, ; —), was a Russian geographer of Polish background and explorer of Central and Eastern Asia. Although he never reached his final goal, Lhasa in Tibet, he travelled through regions unknown to the west, such as northern Tibet, modern Qinghai and...

 and Sir Aurel Stein, participated in earnest. Rumors of Russian expansion into the Hindu Kush
Hindu Kush
The Hindu Kush is an mountain range that stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is Tirich Mir in the Chitral region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a...

 and a Russian presence in Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

 prompted the Viceroy of India Lord Curzon to appoint Younghusband, by then a Major, to serve as British commissioner to Tibet from 1902-1904.

Invasion of Tibet and Massacre at Guru

In 1903-1904, under orders from Curzon, Younghusband, jointly with John Claude White, the Political Officer for Sikkim, led a British expedition to Tibet
British expedition to Tibet
The British expedition to Tibet during 1903 and 1904 was an invasion of Tibet by British Indian forces, whose mission was to establish diplomatic relations and trade between the British Raj and Tibet...

, whose putative aim was to settle disputes over the Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...

-Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

 border; the expedition controversially became (by exceeding instructions from London) a de facto invasion
History of Tibet
Tibetan history, as it has been recorded, is particularly focused on the history of Buddhism in Tibet. This is partly due to the pivotal role this religion has played in the development of Tibetan, Mongol, and Manchu cultures, and partly because almost all native historians of the country were...

 of Tibet.

About one hundred miles inside Tibet, on the way to Gyangzê
Gyangze
Gyangze may refer to:*Gyangzê Town, town in Tibet*Gyangzê County, county in Tibet...

, thence to the capital of Lhasa
Lhasa
Lhasa is the administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China and the second most populous city on the Tibetan Plateau, after Xining. At an altitude of , Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world...

, a confrontation outside the hamlet of Guru led to the massacre, by the expedition, of 600-700 Tibetan militia, largely monks. Some estimates of Tibetan casualties are far higher; including other conflicts, more than five thousand Tibetans may have been killed, against British casualties of five.
The British force was supported by King Ugyen Wangchuck
Ugyen Wangchuck
Gongsa Ugyen Wangchuck was the first King of Bhutan from 1907 to 1926.He was born in 1862 to Jigme Namgyal, penlop of Trongsa and Ashi Pema Choki. He succeeded his father as Penlop of Trongsa...

 of Bhutan
Bhutan
Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...

, who was knighted in return for his services.

In 1891, Younghusband received the Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire
Order of the Indian Empire
The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1878. The Order includes members of three classes:#Knight Grand Commander #Knight Commander #Companion...

 which was upgraded to Knight Commander in 1904; and in 1917, he was awarded the honour of Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India
Order of the Star of India
The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India is an order of chivalry founded by Queen Victoria in 1861. The Order includes members of three classes:# Knight Grand Commander # Knight Commander # Companion...

. He was also awarded the Kaisar-I-Hind Medal (gold) in 1901.

In 1906, Younghusband settled in Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

 as the British representative before returning to Britain
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....

 where he became an active member of many clubs and societies. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 his patriotic Fight for Right
Fight for Right
"Fight for Right" is a song written by the English composer Edward Elgar, with words taken from The Story of Sigurd the Volsung by William Morris.It was published by Elkin in 1916, and dedicated to Members of the Fight for Right Movement....

 campaign commissioned the song Jerusalem
And did those feet in ancient time
"And did those feet in ancient time" is a short poem by William Blake from the preface to his epic Milton a Poem, one of a collection of writings known as the Prophetic Books. The date on the title page of 1804 for Milton is probably when the plates were begun, but the poem was printed c. 1808...

. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1908.

Himalaya and mountaineering

Younghusband was elected President of the Royal Geographical Society
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...

 in 1919, and two years later became Chairman of the Mount Everest Committee
Mount Everest Committee
The Mount Everest Committee was a body formed by the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society to co-ordinate and finance the 1921 British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mount Everest and all subsequent British expeditions to climb the mountain until 1947...

 which was set up in 1921 to co-ordinate the reconnaissance of Mount Everest
Mount Everest
Mount Everest is the world's highest mountain, with a peak at above sea level. It is located in the Mahalangur section of the Himalayas. The international boundary runs across the precise summit point...

. He actively encouraged climbers, including George Mallory
George Mallory
George Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s....

, to attempt the first ascent of Mount Everest, and they followed the same initial route as the earlier Tibet Mission.

In 1938 Younghusband encouraged Ernst Schäfer
Ernst Schäfer
Ernst Schäfer was a famous German hunter and zoologist in the 1930s, specializing in ornithology.-Biography:Schäfer is most famous for his three expeditions to Tibet in 1931, in 1934–1935, and in 1938–1939. The first two expeditions were led by the American Brooke Dolan II...

, who was about to lead a German expedition to Tibet, to "sneak over the border" when faced with British intransigence towards Schäfer's efforts to reach Tibet.

Personal life

In 1897 Younghusband married Helen Augusta Magniac, the daughter of Charles Magniac
Charles Magniac
Charles Magniac was a British financier and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1868 and 1886.He was the eldest son of Hollingworth Magniac of Colworth, Bedfordshire...

, MP. They had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter, Eileen Younghusband
Eileen Younghusband
Dame Eileen Louise Younghusband, DBE, CBE, MBE was internationally known for her research and teaching in the field of social work....

 (1902-1981), who became a prominent social worker.

From 1921 to 1937 the couple lived at Westerham
Westerham
Westerham is a town and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, in South East England with 5,000 people. The parish is south of the North Downs, ten miles west of Sevenoaks. It covers 5800 acres . It is recorded as early as the 9th century, and was mentioned in the Domesday Book in a...

, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, but Helen did not accompany her husband on his travels. In 1939 he met Madeline Lees, 32 years his junior, with whom he conducted a mystical affair until his death.

Spiritual life

Biographer Patrick French
Patrick French
Patrick French is a British writer and historian, based in London. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature....

 describes Younghusband as one who was
brought up an Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...

 Christian, read his way into Tolstoyan
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

 simplicity, experienced a revelatory vision in the mountains of Tibet, toyed with telepathy
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...

 in Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...

, proposed a new faith based on virile racial theory, then transformed it into what Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

 called 'a religion of atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

.'


Ultimately he became what French calls a "premature hippy" who "had great faith in the power of cosmic ray
Cosmic ray
Cosmic rays are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space. They may produce secondary particles that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and surface. The term ray is historical as cosmic rays were thought to be electromagnetic radiation...

s, and claimed that there are extraterrestrials with translucent flesh on the planet Altair."

During his 1904 retreat from Tibet, Younghusband had a mystical experience which suffused him with "love for the whole world" and convinced him that "men at heart are divine." This conviction led him to regret his invasion of Tibet, and eventually, in 1936, to found the World Congress of Faiths (in imitation of the World Parliament of Religions).

Younghusband published a number of books with what we might call New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...

 themes, with titles like The Gleam: Being an account of the life of Nija Svabhava, pseud. (1920); Mother World (in Travail for the Christ that is to be) (1924); and Life in the Stars: An Exposition of the View that on some Planets of some Stars exist Beings higher than Ourselves, and on one a World-Leader, the Supreme Embodiment of the Eternal Spirit which animates the Whole (1927). (This last was admired by Lord Baden-Powell, the Boy Scouts founder.) Key concepts include what would come to be known as the Gaia hypothesis
Gaia hypothesis
The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...

, pantheism
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...

, and a Christlike "world leader" living on the planet "Altair" (or "Stellair"), who radiates spiritual guidance by means of telepathy.

Younghusband also came to believe in free love
Free love
The term free love has been used to describe a social movement that rejects marriage, which is seen as a form of social bondage. The Free Love movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery...

 ("freedom to unite when and how a man and a woman please"), marriage laws being a matter of "outdated custom." He wrote his longtime lover Madeline, Lady Lees that "I have made the discovery that bodily union does not impair soul union but heightens and tightens it." Lees agreed. French, restoring censored passages from Younghusband's correspondence, discovered a letter from him suggesting that Lees was pregnant with Younghusband's child:
...why shouldn't an exceptionally spiritual woman like you who has already had the idea of giving birth to a Christ and who is now wedded in the spirit [to me?] crown her experience and give birth to a God-Child who will manifest God more completely even than Jesus did?


The identity of the child is unknown, and its existence cannot be confirmed.

One of Younghusband's domestic servants, Gladys Aylward
Gladys Aylward
Gladys May Aylward was the evangelical Christian missionary to China whose story was told in the book The Small Woman by Alan Burgess, published in 1957...

, became a Christian missionary to China. The Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...

 film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is a 1958 American 20th Century Fox film based on the true story of Gladys Aylward, a tenacious British maid, who became a missionary in China during the tumultuous years leading up to World War II...

is based on her life, with an actor portraying Younghusband.

Death

In July 1942 Younghusband suffered a stroke after addressing a meeting of the World Congress of Faiths in Birmingham. He died of cardiac failure on 31 July 1942 at Madeline Lees' home at Lytchett Minster
Lytchett Minster
Lytchett Minster is a small village in the English county of Dorset. Lytchett Minster is on the A35 road, the main route between the towns of Poole and Dorchester...

, Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

. He was buried in the village churchyard.

Further reading

  • Allen, Charles. (2004) Duel in the Snows: The True Story of the Younghusband Mission to Lhasa. John Murray (Publishers), London. ISBN 0-7195-5427 6.
  • Broadbent, Tom On Younghusband's Path: Peking to Pindi (ISBN 0-9548542-2-5, pub. 2005).
  • Candler, Edmund
    Edmund Candler
    Edmund Candler was an English journalist, novelist and educator notable for his literary depictions of colonial India. His fictional tropes and settings are comparable in many ways to those of Rudyard Kipling, a writer whom he self-consciously imitated.- Life :Candler was educated at Repton School...

     The Unveiling of Lhasa. (Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd ?1905)
  • Carrington, Michael Officers Gentlemen and Thieves: The Looting of Monasteries during the 1903/4 Younghusband Mission to Tibet, Modern Asian Studies 37, 1 (2003), PP 81–109.
  • Fleming, Peter Bayonets to Lhasa (ISBN 0-583881-583861-9, reprint 1986).
  • French, Patrick Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (ISBN 0-00-637601-0, reprint 1997).
  • Hopkirk, Peter The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (ISBN 1-56836-022-3, reprint 1994).
  • Younghusband, Sir Francis The Epic of Mount Everest (ISBN 0-330-48285-8, reprint 2001).
  • Younghusband, Sir Francis Modern Mystics (ISBN 1-4179-8003-6, reprint 2004).
  • For an academic article relating to the Tibet Mission read: Carrington, Michael: "Officers Gentlemen and Thieves: The Looting of Monasteries during the 1903/4 Younghusband Mission to Tibet", Modern Asian Studies 37, 1 (2003), PP 81–109.
  • Younghusband wrote 26 books in all between 1895 and 1942. Subjects ranged from Asian events, Exploration, Mountaineering, Philosophy, Spirituality, Politics and more.

External links

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