145
decorated after the war with the OBE and the US Legion of Merit. London
Gazette, 5 August 1943; Supplement to the London Gazette, 1 January
1946, 21; Supplement to the London Gazette, 16 November 1948, 6059.
Ryan finally retired as a reserve officer from the Intelligence Corps in
- Supplement to the London Gazette, 13 April 1956, 2155. However,
he appears to have entered civilian life immediately after the war, becoming
the Cairo-based representative of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors
in late 1945. The Straits Times, 18 December 1945.
- The official story of CICI’s establishment and evolution is to be found in
History of Combined Intelligence Centre Iraq and Persia, June 1941–
December 1944, AIR 29/2504, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey
[TNA], which forms the archival scaffolding for the historical narrative in
this chapter.
- H.M. Burton, ‘Wing Commander Robert Jope-Slade (Obituary)’, Asian
Affairs: Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society 28, no. 3 (1941):
386–7.
- Elphinston, educated at Repton, was also a water-colourist of considerable
talent whose work had been hung at the Royal Academy. Somerset de
Chair describes him as ‘a dry-looking little stick of a man who yet had a
kindly heart.’ De Chair, Golden Carpet, 134; ‘In Memoriam: Colonel
William G. Elphinston, MC’, Asian Affairs: Journal of the Royal Central
Asian Society 40, no. 2 (1953): 174–6.
- CICI Intelligence Appreciation, 2 June 1941, WO 201/1257, TNA.
- Arthur Irons Sargon (born 1887), OBE, DSO, was transferred to the
British Army (General List) in 1942 as a substantive 2nd lieutenant with
the local rank of lieutenant colonel. Supplement to the London Gazette, 26
May 1919, 6466; London Gazette, 28 May 1926, 3453; Supplement to the
London Gazette, 29 December 1942, 5633; ‘Memories of Iraq’ in Sylvia
Arthur et al., eds., This Is the World That We Live In (Lulu.com, 2010),
- See ‘From Womb to Tomb’, Cecil Gervase Hope-Gill Collection, GB165-
0151, MECA. The previous tenant, assistant oriental secretary Hope-Gill,
about to transfer to the Belgian Congo, commented: ‘... handed over our
beautiful Palace of the Moon to CICI ... the lucky dogs!’ Ibid.
- Geoffrey Household, Against the Wind (London: Michael Joseph, 1958),
- Among the CICI officers whom Household encountered at the
Moon Palace was Evelyn Waugh’s older brother, Alec Waugh. Cf. Nigel
West, ‘Fiction, Faction, and Intelligence’ in L.V. Scott and P.D. Jackson,
eds., Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-first Century: Journeys in
Shadows (London: Routledge, 2004), 129.
- Perowne to Beresford, 8 June 1942, Perowne 4/1, Stewart Henry
Perowne Collection, GB165-0228, MECA. SOE was not represented on
THE MOON PALACE
