Page 339 - They Also Served

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Timothy Landon 1962.
The son of an army officer and his
Hollywood makeup artist wife, James
Timothy Whittington Landon was born
on 20th August 1942 in Vancouver,
Canada. Educated at Eastbourne College,
he entered Sandhurst in 1960 and was commissioned into the 10th Hussars. Posted to the Middle East with his regiment, he was disappointed when the tour ended, so he applied for secondment to the Muscat Regiment in Oman. Soon afterwards, he was moved to a post as an intelligence officer and, according to Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who was serving with the SAS in Dhofar at the time, was a great success: ‘We never had good intelligence before, but Tim provided it. He got to know the locals, learnt their language and kept us in the picture’.
At the time, Oman was ruled by Sultan Said bin Taimur, a reactionary whose autocratic style prevented modernisation, which, in turn, fanned rebellion in Dhofar and, therefore, threatened the security of the Gulf of Hormuz and Britain’s oil supply. His son, the Sandhurst-educated Qaboos, returned from an attachment to the Cameronian Regiment and was immediately placed under house arrest by his paranoid father. Said believed that Landon would be a good influence on his son, so allowed the two to meet regularly. On 23rd July 1970, with British backing assured and with Landon having persuaded Qaboos that this was the only course of action, the sultan was confronted and ordered to hand over power to his son. When later asked what his biggest regret was, Said replied, ’Not having Landon shot!’
Qaboos’s rise to power coincided with the development of Omani oil – the state prospered, and modernisation cemented the popularity of the young ruler. Landon left the army to become the senior personal advisor to Qaboos. During the 1970s, Landon was promoted to brigadier in the Omani Army and brokered numerous arms deals to modernise the armed forces, turning them into one of the best small forces in the Arab world. Each time a deal was struck, Landon obtained a portion of the contract, on top of gifts from his grateful patron. Indeed, it is rumoured that Landon received a cheque for one million pounds each birthday until his death.
In the early 1980s, Landon returned to England and invested his wealth in land and property, increasing his portfolio to become one of the largest private landowners
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