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'"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE' [40r] (79/336)
The record is made up of 1 volume (168 folios). It was created in 1982?. It was written in English. The original is part of the British Library: India Office The department of the British Government to which the Government of India reported between 1858 and 1947. The successor to the Court of Directors. Records and Private Papers Documents collected in a private capacity. .
Transcription
This transcription is created automatically. It may contain errors.
38 -
The first thing to be done was to get our passage money out of the Accounts
people and that was no easy matter because they were most reluctant to give
it to us until the journey had been accomplished, but judicious use of the
Colonel's name eventually produced results and we were able to pay our
share over to the Colonel. As far as clothes and bedding were concerned,
there was not much to buy as we were limited to one small suitcase each and
a roll of bedding between the two of us. We both had sheets and pillows
and I had a sleeping bag, but the real trouble was to decide what to leave
behind. We had been told that we must take dinner jackets with us because
we would be staying in the Consulate-General in Meshed and would want them
both in Teheran and in Baghdad. When I had fitted a dinner jacket plus
trousers and two evening shirts into a small suitcase, there was not much
room for a comprehensive wardrobe so X limited my other clothing to two
i^nnis shirts and a spare pair of trousers and shoes. We permitted our
selves one luxury and bought between us a second-hand camera with which to
make a record of a journey of over two thousand five hundred miles by road
and which was to take from door to door, that is from Quetta to London, just
over five weeks. That we could afford only a second-hand camera illustrates
only too clearly how meagre were our financial resources.
On the day before our departure, the Colonel broke the news to us that we
would not be alone in our venture as he had agreed to Colonel and Mrs
Hutchins accompanying us in their own car. So the party consisted of the
Colonel and his wife, a very charming and kind lady, Bill Fellowes and my-
s©lf in the Fiat, and the Hutchins in their own car. What eventually hap
pened to the Hutchins I cannot recall and the all too brief diary, which I
kept on the journey, is no help at all. I believe we parted company with
them in leheran as ± have no recollection of them in Baghdad and can assume
only that once they had reached what passed for civilisation, they carried
on on their own, probably only too glad to see the last of the "Purple
Emperor" who could on occasion be most difficult.
On the 11th April we loaded the two cars into a wagon attached to the North
Western Railway train which ran from Quetta to Duzdap, as it was then called,
it has since h* renamed Zaidan, well inside the Persian border. Later the
trains ceased to run beyond the Baluchistan border at Dalbandin and may by
now have stopped altogether for all that I know. We arrived at Duzdap
About this item
- Content
This volume is a set of typewritten memoirs by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, a retired officer of the British Indian Army and the Indian Political Service The branch of the British Government of India with responsibility for managing political relations between British-ruled India and its surrounding states, and by extension the Gulf, during the period 1937-47. . Hickinbotham held various positions in India and in the Middle East, and these memoirs recount stories from his time in Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Quetta, Persia [Iran], Aden, Audhali, Bahrain and North Waziristan.
The memoirs were most likely completed in 1982-83; they cover the period 1927-1982, although most of the chapters relate to events from the 1930s and 1940s.
Hickinbotham writes not only about his official duties but also about various trips taken during periods of leave. Below is a list of the chapters, with a short summary of each:
- 'No Medals This Time' (ff 3-6) – details of an incident in Kuwait involving a dhow A term adopted by British officials to refer to local sailing vessels in the western Indian Ocean. that caught fire off the foreshore at Shuwaik [Ash Shuwaykh]
- 'The Silver Coin' (ff 7-10) – thoughts on the use of the Maria Theresa thaler in Arabia
- 'The Golden Dagger' (ff 11-36) – an account of Hickinbotham's unofficial visit to Riyadh to meet Ibn Saud [‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd] in May 1942
- 'The Brass Pencase' (ff 37-53) – memories of a journey undertaken from Quetta to Europe via north Persia in 1927, travelling in a Fiat Tourer with Colonel T Nisbet (also referred to as the 'purple emperor'), on what Hickinbotham claims to have been the first trip taken by car from India to the Mediterranean
- 'The Bronze Boy' (ff 54-72) – reminiscences of weekends spent in 'Little Aden' (a rocky peninsula seven miles west of Aden), in 1938, and a later visit, in December 1961
- 'The Silver Letter Case' (ff 73-118) – details of a ten-day trip on the Audhali plateau in the summer of 1938, and a return visit, in December 1960 (the chapter ends with remarks on the situation in Yemen generally from the late sixties to the time of writing, i.e. 1982)
- 'The Agate Ring' (ff 119-144) – memories of travelling in Oman during the summer of 1940 and how this compared with Hickinbotham's last visit to the country in 1980
- 'The Pearl Tie Pin' (ff 145-151) – thoughts and anecdotes on the pearl trade in Bahrain
- 'A Point of View' (ff 152-157) – a story told to Hickinbotham, possibly fictional, of a pearl trader in the Gulf who lost his fortune and livelihood, and eventually his sanity
- 'Snakes Alive!!' (ff 158-161) – an account of a near-fatal encounter with a krite [krait] in Waziristan
- 'The Queen's Visit' (ff 162-168) – memories of the Queen's visit to the Aden Protectorate in 1954, where Hickinbotham was serving as Governor.
- Extent and format
- 1 volume (168 folios)
- Arrangement
The volume contains an index of chapter headings on folio 2, which includes some handwritten corrections and annotations.
- Physical characteristics
Foliation: the foliation sequence (used for referencing) commences at the first folio with 1, and terminates at the last folio with 168; these numbers are written in pencil, are circled, and are located in the top right corner of the recto The front of a sheet of paper or leaf, often abbreviated to 'r'. side of each folio. An additional mixed foliation/pagination sequence is also present in parallel between ff 3-168.
Condition: The original plastic comb binding ring has been replaced with a wider one to facilitate flat opening of the volume. Polyester film covers have been added to protect the first and last folios.
- Written in
- English in Latin script View the complete information for this record
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'"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE' [40r] (79/336), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, Mss Eur F226/13, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100094411638.0x000050> [accessed 5 April 2025]
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Copyright: How to use this content
- Reference
- Mss Eur F226/13
- Title
- '"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE'
- Pages
- 1r:168v
- Author
- Hickinbotham, Sir Tom
- Usage terms
- The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.