Page 29 - Begrave Thesis_Neat
P. 29
attended Bedford School and was later enrolled at Lincoln College, Oxford, for a
semester. He was unable to further his education as he enrolled to serve his country
in the 1914-18 First World War. Belgrave joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment
in February 1915 and received training until August when he was assigned to the
British Camel Company in Sudan. In early 1917 he was stationed in Egypt and
Palestine. After the war he was appointed to his first administrative post in 1920 as
a Political Officer and Judicial Officer in the Siwa Oasis in the west of Egypt.
28
Belgrave was the son of a barrister-at-law named Dalrymple James Belgrave who
died on 2 May 1922.
29
A draft of the agreement to appoint Belgrave was created to be signed
between him and the Ruler of Bahrain, Sheikh Hamad. The initial period of
30
employment was for four years. Prideaux outlined to the Foreign Secretary to the
Government of India what responsibilities Belgrave was required to undertake.
Though the official title of Belgrave would be the Financial Adviser to the
Government of Bahrain, he would ‘work as Personal Assistant to Shaikh Hamad’. He
would further be instructed to supervise administrative work of the state.
31
Before his departure from London for Bahrain, Belgrave married through his
family’s association Marjorie Lepel Barrett-Lennard, a Baron’s daughter, in early
32
1926. Her brother, Sir Richard Barrett-Lennard, served as a Director of Norwich
Union insurance company and who (through Belgrave and a Bahraini merchant)
28 IOR/R/15/1/362, Belgrave’s Résumé.
29 ‘Obituary: Dalrymple James Belgrave’, The Times, 4 May 1922, 1.
30 IOR/R/15/1/362, Memorandum of Agreement between the Ruler of Bahrain and Belgrave.
31 IOR/R/15/2/128, Residency to Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, 10 October 1925.
32 Belgrave, Personal Column, 11.
© Hamad E. Abdulla 8