Younghusband

Within a few years, Mr. French had made his first trips to India and Tibet, where he learned about Younghusband and became increasingly interested in the origins of India’s independence movement.

A previous version of this obituary incorrectly referred to the subject of Patrick French’s book “Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer.”

As noted elsewhere in the article, the subject’s name is Francis Younghusband, not Francis Youngblood.

Beginning with his first book, a biography of British army officer Francis Younghusband that he wrote while still in his 20s, he was known for his nuanced, evenhanded studies of people who might be “abominable one year,” as he put it, but “oddly endearing the next.”

To research the book, he retraced some of Younghusband’s steps across Asia and battled with librarians in Kolkata, trying to gain access to the lieutenant colonel’s diplomatic cables.