109
Richardson concluded that Thompson had been the most encouraging
and carefully analytical of all the diplomats he had visited on his tour.^57
Pat Domvile himself was given a mixed review: ‘Beyond any doubt he
is today one of the few British subjects who can be really classified as an
expert on Arab affairs. He is an idealist, possessing personal charm and
considerable culture but is not suited temperamentally to control the
administration and financial problems with which we are faced.’ However,
by this late stage in the war, Domvile had already received several attractive
offers of lucrative civilian employment in Cairo; he was no doubt more
concerned about the amount of his RAF pension as a retired long-service
group captain than about Richardson’s assessment of him.^58 As for Teddy
Hodgkin, Richardson certainly could see no reason why he should not
continue as field commander in Baghdad, operating under new cover pro-
vided by the Arab News Bureau, given his professional reputation as an
experienced newspaper correspondent (with the Manchester Guardian).^59
Notes
- Maurice Bowra, Memories, 1898–1939 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967), 130. - Luftwaffe Major Julius Berthold Schulze-Holthus (SABA) of Abwehr air
intelligence (Abw I L). See ‘SABA’ in Adrian O’Sullivan, Nazi Secret
Warfare in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Failure of the German Intelligence
Services, 1939–45 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) [NSW],
144–57. - SS Lieutenant Franz Mayr (MAX/RABBI) of SS foreign intelligence
(RSHA VI C). See ‘MAX’ in NSW, 108–29. - MO1 to Gowan, 20 November 1942, HS 9/157/8, TNA.
- Cairo to ACSS, Wire SOE/415, 9 September 1942, HS 9/157/8,
TNA. The shocking murder by Bakhtiari tribesmen of SOE’s
R.C. Skipworth Harris (D/N.14) and two visiting Australian friends on 3
August 1942 has been fully described and discussed in Adrian O’Sullivan,
Espionage and Counterintelligence in Occupied Persia (Iran): The Success of
the Allied Secret Services (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) [ECOP],
122–9. See also Survey of Global Activities, War Diary 43, July–August
1942, HS 7/266, TNA. - The most concise account is Seton Lloyd’s in The Interval: A Life in Near
Eastern Archaeology (Faringdon: Lloyd Collon, 1986), 88. The plausibility
of the official account is reinforced by the fact that there was a strong
impression within Bishop’s family that he was accident-prone. His cousin
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