Known as The Viscount French between 1916 and 1922, French was a British Army officer. Born in Kent to an Anglo-Irish family, he saw brief service as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, before becoming a cavalry officer. He achieved rapid promotion and distinguished himself on the Gordon Relief Expedition. French was a notorious womaniser throughout his life and his career nearly ended when he was cited in the divorce of a brother officer whilst in India in the early 1890s.

He became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1918, a position that he held throughout much of the Irish War of Independence. Whilst serving in this position he published 1914, a volume of memoirs.