De Beajolais begins, confusingly, with him in disgrace in the brig, punished for going AWOL (to help a woman in a fix). The novel opens (after a brief preface in which Wren avers that despite the critical complaints that some of the events in his books are implausible, they all actually happened) with what is represented to be the 'unfinished memoirs of Major Henri de Beaujolais'. My copy appears to be a US first edition (no dust jacket), published by Frederick Stokes. Beau Geste appeared in 1924, and was a great success.

But he began to produce adventure stories in about 1914. His early books are mostly textbooks for use in Indian schools, and one collection of stories set in India. Apparently the details of Foreign Legion life in his novels are quite accurate, however. He claimed that he spent 5 years in the French Foreign Legion after the deaths of his wife and daughter, but there are no records confirming this, and the balance of opinion seems to be that he made that story up. He spent some time in India, mostly as a schoolteacher, though he did serve in the military briefly. Wren was an Englishman, born 1875, died 1941. And, as I found out, Beau Sabreur is only a very indirect sequel. This turns out to be inaccurate in a sense, because the story of the Geste brothers ultimately filled (one way or another) 5 volumes (4 novels and a collection). I found copies of Beau Sabreur and Beau Ideal cheap, and I decided to read Beau Sabreur, because I saw it referred to as the second of the ' Beau Geste Trilogy'. It turns out there were several sequels (of sorts) to Beau Geste, and some related short stories.

it was a well-known book (and has been filmed several times, perhaps most famously in 1939 starring Gary Cooper) but I frankly had no idea there were any others. I remember enjoying it, don't remember much else. Wren's most famous book, Beau Geste, a story of some English brothers in the French Foreign Legion. Long ago, when I was a teenager, I read P.

Beau Geste by P.C. Wren