Written by General Sir George St Patrick Lawrence (1804–84) of the British Indian Army, this 1874 book is a memoir of his long and active service in India. The son of a distinguished officer in the army of the East India Company, he arrived in India in 1821, and was a participant in all the major military encounters of the period, including the Anglo-Afghan Wars, where he was involved in the 'Cabul disaster' and later narrowly avoided execution as a hostage, the Anglo-Sikh wars, and the Indian Mutiny, during which he and his family survived great danger. Lawrence, whose health had been undermined during the Mutiny, resigned from the army and returned to England in 1864. He entrusted his letters and diaries to William Edwards of the Bengal Civil Service, who compiled the work from these sources, and supplies a brief overview of Lawrence's career in his preface.