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an advertisement in the ‘Personal Column’ section of The Times of London was
placed in 1925. The advertisement sought the services of a man aged between
twenty-two and twenty-eight with minimum education to work for an unspecified
eastern state. The advertisement caught the attention of Charles Belgrave, a thirty-
one-year-old British officer who was in London at the time on leave from service in
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East Africa and he decided to forward his résumé.
Belgrave was called to an interview in London by the Gulf’s Resident
Prideaux. The Resident confirmed to the India Office’s Political Department that
Belgrave was on leave from Tanganyika in East Africa. He also noted some of
Belgrave’s skills that included a command of Arabic, Swahili, and French. Belgrave
was chosen as the most suitable candidate for the job and was informed by Prideaux
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that he was to be posted and would come under the pay of Bahrain. There seemed
to have been some confusion in relation to Belgrave’s age, since the advertisement
required a man in his twenties while Belgrave was in his thirties. The confusion
deliberate or not was justified by Belgrave to Prideaux in a letter dated 11
September 1925. He apologised for what had apparently been a misunderstanding
on his part about his age, as he said that he had thought he was twenty-eight years
old but when he got a hold of his birth certificate it was apparent to him that he was
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born in 1894.
Belgrave’s résumé presented with his application provided an overview of
his career prior to his appointment in Tanganyika. For his education, Belgrave
25 C.D. Belgrave, Personal Column, (Beirut: 1972), 7-9.
26 IOR/R/15/2/128, Residency to India Office Political Department, 15 September 1925.
27 IOR/R/15/1/362, Belgrave to Prideaux, 11 September 1925.
© Hamad E. Abdulla 7
