I Served the King of England (Czech: Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále) is a novel by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal. The story is set in Prague in the 1940s, during the Nazi occupation and early communism, and follows a young man who alternately gets into trouble and has successes. Hrabal wrote the book during a period of censorship in the early 1970s. It began circulating in 1971and was formally published in 1983. It was adapted into a 2006 film with the same title, directed by Jiří Menzel, a noted director of the Czech New Wave.