R. V. C. Bodley (18921970) was a British Army officer, author and journalist.

After studying
at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Bodley was commissioned into the King's Royal Rifle
Corps. He served with them during the First World War, where he was given the rank
of lieutenant colonel and command of a battalion. After witnessing the 1919 Paris Peace
Conference, he grew disillusioned with the military and went to live in the Sahara as a nomad for
seven years, at the suggestion of T. E. Lawrence. In 1927 he wrote a successful book on his
travels, Algeria From Within, the first of his 18 books. After leaving the Sahara he traveled Asia,
and was one of few Westerners allowed access to Japan's South Pacific Mandates during the
1930s. Bodley moved to the United States in 1935, where he worked as a screenwriter, and was
hired by Charlie Chaplin in 1936. He re-enlisted in the British Army at the outbreak of the Second
World War and was sent to Paris to work for the Ministry of Information. He later returned to the
United States, where he was an advisor to the Arabic desk of the United States Office of War
Information.