B. L. Putnam Weale

B. L. Putnam Weale was the pen name of Bertram Lenox Simpson (1877–1930), a British journalist and author who spent most of his life in China. Born in Ningbo, the son of an official of the Chinese customs service, he was educated in Switzerland and lived through the siege of the Peking legations in 1900, which he described in Indiscreet Letters from Peking. He wrote many books and novels on Chinese politics and the Far East, and later advised Chinese governments. He was shot in Tianjin in 1930, after taking part in a political seizure of the customs there, and died of his wounds.