Harold Lamb

Harold Albert Lamb (September 1, 1892 – April 9, 1962) was an American writer, novelist, historian, and screenwriter.

Early life Lamb was born September 1, 1892, in Alpine, New Jersey. His mother was Eliza Rollinson, and his father was Frederick Lamb, a mural painter who designed stained glass. His paternal grandfather was an artist who started J. & R. Lamb Studios, a company that made stained glass.

He was shy with impaired hearing, sight, and speech as a child,

Career Lamb built a career with his writing from an early age. He began writing for pulp magazines, writing stories about the mountains of Afghanistan and the Russian steppes.

The success of Lamb's two-volume history of the Crusades led to his discovery by Cecil B. DeMille, who employed Lamb as a technical advisor on a related movie, The Crusades. He also wrote several novels which were almost like dramatized biographies; he did not invent much beyond known history.

Lamb produced several fantasy novels featuring lost worlds. These included Marching Sands, about a lost city of Crusaders in the Gobi Desert. A Garden to the Eastward features a hidden tribe living in an extinct volcano in Kurdistan. Cecelia Holland has described Lamb as "a master of pace [who] had a gift also for the quick glimpse of a landscape that throws everything into perspective", and has praised Lamb's plotting and action writing.

Writers acknowledging the influence of Lamb's work include: Ben Bova, Thomas B. Costain, Gardner Fox, Harry Harrison, Robert E. Howard, Howard Andrew Jones, Scott Oden, Norvell Page, and Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.

Personal life During World War I in May 1917, he served as a private in the Seventh New York regiment (K Company). Samson and Delilah (1949). The Golden Horde (1951) The Buccaneer (1958)