Bengal Lancer

When Francis Yeats-Brown set off in 1905 to take up a commission in the British Indian Army, little did he know how deeply he would fall in love with the culture of India and her spiritual traditions. Between duties with his regiment, and enjoying the off-duty life of an officer – polo and hunting, ponies and dogs – he would disappear in search of a guru to lead him in the essentials of yoga, meditation and Hindu mysticism. Yeats-Brown proves himself brave, funny and self-deprecating, such good company that we do not care that ultimately he never found the spiritual master he searched for, nor won the unattainable woman he desired. It is his idiosyncratic journey to establish some kind of truth, and the world he shows us on the way, that beguiles.