Achmed Abdullah is the pseudonym of Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff (1881-1945), a Russian-English author born of a Russian Orthodox father and a Muslim mother, raised in Britain and educated at Eton and Oxford, served in the British Army in France, China and India, wrote mystery, crime and adventure novels some based on his own experiences. Additionally, he wrote screenplays perhaps the most famous of which is for the 1935 film, Lives of a Bengal Lancer.