H. R. P. Dickson

Lieutenant Colonel Harold Richard Patrick Dickson (4 February 1881 – 14 June 1959) was a British colonial administrator in the Middle East from the 1920s until the 1940s, and author of several books on Kuwait.

Life

H. R. P. Dickson was one of six children of John Dickson, a diplomat in the Levant from 1872 to 1906, and Edith Wills. He was born in Beirut, Lebanon and was taken at a young age to Damascus, Syria where his father was Consul. There, his mother's milk failed and Shaikh Mijwal al Mazrab, the husband of Lady Jane Digby, provided the young child with a wet nurse from the 'Anizah tribe. Islamic law lays out the permanent family-like relationships that are created by wet nursing, and this "blood affinity" between Dickson and the 'Anizah meant he was treated as a member of the tribe. He stated that this blood tie 'in later life has been of assistance to me in my dealings with the Badawin [bedouin] of the high desert and around Kuwait'. Following the death of Lady Jane Digby, the Dickson family rented her house in Damascus, and Dickson recalled that he 'spent my childhood days rambling about the lovely garden that had once been [her] pride and happiness.'.

Dickson was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford and then attended Wadham College at Oxford University, where he was a university candidate in the Volunteer battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry. He joined the 1st Connaught Rangers as a second lieutenant on 28 January 1903, serving in Ireland until 1904 and then in India, first with the 2nd Battalion Connaught Rangers and then in the 29th Lancers of the Indian Army. In the First World War he served in Mesopotamia before being transferred to the Political Department.