Wren claimed to have worked as a navvy, deckhand, costermonger and fairground boxer during a three-year period between school and Oxford, as well as enlisting briefly as a cavalry trooper in the Queen's Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards).

[3] Wren worked as a boarding school teacher for a few years, during which he married Alice Shovelier, and had a daughter (Estelle, born 1901).

One of the few photographs of Wren known (see above) shows a typical British officer of the Edwardian era with clipped moustache, wearing plain dark blue regimental dress.

When his novels became famous, there was a mysterious absence of authenticating photographs of him as a legionnaire or of the usual press-articles by old comrades wanting to cash in on their memories of a celebrated figure.

It is now thought more likely that he encountered legionnaires during travels in French North Africa, and skillfully blended their stories with his own memories of a short spell as a cavalry trooper in Britain.

[7] Similarly, the episode of the fallen soldiers in Beau Geste, who were propped up by Sergeant Major Lejaune to create the impression that they were still alive, was probably inspired by a story in Frederic Martyn's memoirs, Life in the Legion: from a Soldier's Point of View (1911): The Historical and Information Service of the Foreign Legion holds no record of service by anyone of Wren's name and have stated their belief that he obtained his information from a legionnaire discharged in 1922.

In a history published in 2010, the military writer Martin Windrow examines in detail the evidence for and against Wren's service with the Foreign Legion before concluding that, in the absence of some further documentary discovery, the question is an insoluble one.

[16] The divorce was granted, and a letter by Isabel to Ronald Colman (who played Beau Geste in the silent film) in 1929 on behalf of her "seriously ill" husband suggests that she and Wren had married at least as early as 1928 (actual date 3 December 1927).

After many years in a successful teaching career, Graham-Smith, known to most people simply as Alan, retired to Devon, where he lived in the South Hams coastal village of Torcross until his death on 31 December 2006 at the age of 96.