Percival Christopher Wren is chiefly remembered as the author of Beau Geste (1924). A child of the Victorian era, he grew up in an atmosphere of privilege and with a strong sense of noblesse oblige. This commitment of service to the less fortunate, and especially those of Great Britain, is a constant theme in his books and is perhaps the best way to appreciate his sincere, if limited, writing talent.

Born in Devonshire in 1885 (the exact date of his birth is not recorded in any standard source), Percival Christopher Wren was a collateral descendant of the renowned seventeenth-century architect Sir Christopher Wren. More noteworthy is the fact that the house in which he was born was the model for the home of Amyas Leigh, the hero of Charles Kingsley's enormously influential romance of muscular Christianity, Westward Ho! (1855). The young Wren was idealistic about British history and highly patriotic, and...