Younghusband, Francis
Entry updated 19 January 2019. Tagged: Author.
(1863-1942) UK soldier, explorer, journalist and author, now notorious (though praised at the time) for his almost certainly unauthorized invasion of Tibet in 1903-1904 (see Imperialism), in which it is estimated (perhaps exaggeratedly) that up to a thousand Tibetan monks were killed for each British soldier who died; too old for active combat in World War One, he helped form a ginger group advocating its ruthless continuation. Younghusband later became a spiritualist, an influence on Lord Baden-Powell (1857-1941), an advocate of free love, and an early promulgator of the Gaia Hypothesis (see Gaia). The unfictionalized 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) features a Telepathic Alien who transmits wisdom to Earth from the planet Altair. The Coming Country: A Pre-Vision (1928) is set in the imaginary Near Future country of Ourownland, where a benign Utopia has been founded and is destined to spiritualize the world. [JC]
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband
born Murree, India [now Pakistan]: 31 May 1863
died Lytchett Minster, Dorset: 31 July 1942
works
- 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 (London: John Murray, 1927) [hb/]
- The Coming Country: A Pre-Vision (London: John Murray, 1928) [hb/]
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