Valour and the Horror Book

Younghusband, a strange name for an strange man. As the confluence point of Victorian imperialism, interwar theosophatic volkisch willthrust, and new age proto-hippy dom (though those latter two ideologies do share more in common than many think) I always wanted to know more about him. I even once wrote him into the role of a minor villain under the shadow of more ominous antagonists like Julius Evola, Uchida Ryohei, and Aleister Crowley in an alternate history graphic novel script I wrote a few years ago. That was a strange time period with lots of Alex Jones-meets-Pazuzu Algarad type of people having larger platforms than one might expect, and lesser known people like Younghusband are ripe for uses in works of fiction.

This book does his complex legacy, with its admiral feats of endurance and adventure as well as his bizarre ideas, good justice. As his life got less interesting, Younghusband's inner life became more strange. This included 'spiritual experiences' with beings who had translucent flesh and lived in a solar system orbiting the star Altair.

Patrick French as a biographer does a great job weaving in his search for the subject. Normally, I would not like this in a work of history biography or not. I find this (usually British) interjection of travelogue from author with subject to be narrative ruining and narcissistic in most instances. But the authors examples from research (mostly) add to the narrative. The author made some original discoveries during his time writing and thus succeeded to what most biographers would aspire to.