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'"NO MEDALS THIS TIME" by Sir Tom Hickinbotham, KCMG, KCVO, CIE, OBE' [103r] (205/336)
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.
TLe Frot^ctc-r&tc Levisited
Deceiaber 1960
I arrived by air from London in December 1960 to nay a private visit to the
Protectorate and stay with my old friend the Audhali Sultan. His Excellency
the Governor most kindly came to meet me and among those present at the
Civil Airport was my host-to-be, The Honourable Sultan Saleh bin Hussein,
CMG, CBS. I drove with His Excellency along "Queansway" across the one time
open Ma'alla plain, now covered with blocks of flats, to the heavily built-
up area of Tawahi and on to Government House high above xhe harbour on Has
Tarshyue.
The day after my arrival I was taken to see the Central Market near the Civil
Airport by Sultan Saleh bin Hussein himself who is a Minister of the
Federation of Arab Amirates of the South. To this market are brought all the
fruit and vegetables which are imported into the Colony by air and by land
from the Protectorate and here they are auctioned by official auctioneers.
The market is spacious, as it needs to be, and is efficiently organised and
is provided with a branch of the National & Grindlays Bank into which the
purchaso money must be paid before the goods can be removed from the market
premises. The market has been rendered necessary by the tremendous increase
in the export of fruit and vegetables from the Protectorate to the Colony and
the sight of it functioning so efficiently gave me great pleasure. It was a
far cry from the day I had seen that solitary dish of salad in the house in
the village of Bilad Am'Shur and thip tremendous change had come to pass
through the combined efforts of the Rulers and Government and the able and
devoted work of successive Directors of Agriculture and their Assistants.
Two days after my arrival I left by landrover to drive up to the town of
Loder In the Audhali Sultanate where I had been invited to spend Christmas.
We drove along the beach for thirty miles before turning off close to the
village of A1 Kod where there has been built the Jinning and Baling plant for
the cotton produced from the Abiyan area whose value in a good season would
be over €2,000,000. From A1 Kod we drove along a we11-construeted road on to
Zlnzlbar where I lunched with The Honourable Sultan Ahmad bln Abdullah who is
another of the Federal Ministers and who, at that time, ruled the Fadli
Sultanate in which is situated one of the secondary schools of the Protector-
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' [103r] (205/336), British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers, Mss Eur F226/13, in Qatar Digital Library <https://www.qdl.qa/archive/81055/vdc_100094411639.0x000006> [accessed 13 August 2026]
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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.