[Palestine Content] – [Luke, Harry Charles] Roberts-Wray, Sir Kenneth [Order of St Michael and St George].

Six – Page (!) Manuscript Letter Signed (MLS) / Autographed Letter Signed (ALS) by Sir Kenneth Roberts-Wray to Sir Harry Luke. Stunning manuscript letter in which Roberts-Wray discloses information from the inner workings of the “Palestine Commission”, which investigated Sir Harry Luke and the Wailing Wall – Incident. Roberts-Wray would go on to become an important Legal Adviser for the Crown and the Colonial Office and his star rose steady and led to him writing “Commonwealth and Colonial Law”, the most important work on understanding the british understanding of legal procedure and Colonial Power today.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. German Colony, Jerusalem, , 12th of January, 1930. Small Quarto. 6 pages on 3 sheets with original envelope. From the personal collection of Sir Harry Luke.

“My dear Luke, If you are now in England I expect you have heard all about the Commission, although you will not have read in the papers anything about the most interesting things that happened. In the first place the Arab case did not belit the promise of the early youth; but I think that Alami was right when he said that, if it was going well, it was because God, and not the Arab counsel, were conducting it.
The strength of the Arab case was, of course, embarrassing to us : we tried to flap round a bit but I cannot say that we were very successful.
Then came the Jewish case: even with my nine years experience of the Jews I was astonished. First of all, they put in all the P.L.E.cables to the 2.0.
I suppose the object was to show that the changes against the Government made before the Commission were afterthoughts because they were contained in cables which were contemporaraitons with the events. The Jews apparently had overlooked the criticism that the charges were unsupported by evidence at the time they were made and, indeed, three months afterwards…….″
[this was only page one (of six) of this stunning document] !


Sir Kenneth Owen Roberts-Wray, GCMG, QC (1899–1983) was a British lawyer and civil servant. An authority on Commonwealth and colonial law, he was Legal Adviser to the Commonwealth Relations Office (Dominions Office until 1947) and the Colonial Office from 1945 to 1960.
Born 6 June 1899, Kenneth Roberts-Wray was the son of Captain Thomas Henry Roberts-Wray, sometime aide-de-camp to King George V, and of Florence Grace Roberts-Wray. He was educated at University Tutorial College, Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and Merton College, Oxford, where he took first-class honours in jurisprudence.
During the First World War, Roberts-Wray was commissioned into the Royal Artillery as a second lieutenant in 1918, promoted to lieutenant in 1919, and retired from the army because of wounds in 1920. He was called to the bar in 1924, receiving the Certificate of Honour at the bar examinations. Joining the Civil Service in 1926, he joined the Ministry of Health as a Professional Legal Clerk, before being promoted Assistant Chief Clerk in 1929.
He transferred to the Dominions Office and the Colonial Office in 1931 as Second Assistant Legal Adviser, and was promoted to Assistant Legal Adviser in 1943, and Legal Adviser in 1945. During his tenure, he took part in numerous pre-independence constitutional conferences as legal adviser, the last one being the constitutional conference leading to the independence of Nigeria in 1960.
In retirement, Roberts-Wray was the author of Commonwealth and Colonial Law (Stevens, 1966), a seminal work in that area. From January to June 1969, he served as Acting Attorney-General of Gibraltar. He died on 29 August 1983.
Roberts-Wray firstly married in 1927 Joan Tremayne Waring (died 1961); they had three sons. After he death, he married secondly, in 1965, Lady (Mary Howard) Williams, widow of Sir Ernest Williams.
Roberts-Wray was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1946, promoted Knight Commander in 1949, and Knight Grand Cross in 1960. In 1959, he was appointed a Queen’s Counsel. He received an honorary DCL from the University of Oxford in 1967 and an honorary LLD from the University of Birmingham in 1968. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: British Colonial Administration · British Colonial History · British Foreign Office · British Foreign Policy · Commonwealth and Colonial Law · Harry Luke – Palestine II (1928) · Law – Rare · Middle Eastern History – Rare · Order of St Michael and St George · Palestine · Palestine – Content / Sir Harry Luke Collection · Palestine Content (Autographed Letter Signed – ALS) · Palestine Content (Printed Chapters) · Roberts-Wray, Kenneth · Sir Harry Luke · Sir Harry Luke – Personal Archive of Books and Correspondence · Sir Harry Luke Collection · Wailing Wall Incident / Western Wall Riots of 1929
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 31796AB

EUR 275.000,--