101. [Malta Content] – [Luke, Sir Harry / Lukach, Harry].

Original photographic plate of Edward Cruana Dingli’s painting of Sir Harry Luke.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Octavo. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.

102. [Malta Content] – [Luke, Sir Harry] / Major Algnernon Tudor-Craig.

Manuscript Letter / Autograph Letter signed on Stationery of the Lieutenant Governor of Malta, from Sir Harry Luke to Major Sir Algernon Tudor-Craig: “Dear Sir Algernon Tudor-Craig, oddly enough your letter of the 28th August, after following me about Austria & Yugoslavia, actually found me in Dubrovnik, from which I have just returned via Hercegovina & Bosnia. That will explain why i failed to show up when you called at Malta. I am sorry, as I should have liked to see you at Casa Leoni” – Luke continues by expressing his hope that both parties will be “more fortunate next time”….″Yours sincerely H C Luke”.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. [St.James Club Piccadilly], 21-IX-1936. Small Quarto. 1 sheet with both sides in manuscript handwriting. From the library of Algernon Tudor-Craig. Very nice letter by Luke on his beautiful Maltese stationery to the british army officer and reknown heraldist Tudor-Craig.

103. [Malta Content] – [Luke, Sir Harry] / Pirie-Gordon, Christopher.

Long (2-page) Manuscript Letter (MLS) / Autographed Letter, signed (ALS) by Christopher Pirie-Gordon, 14th Laird of Buthlaw, “formerly Assistant-Resident in Amman and seconded for service under the Foreign Office, following the winding-up of the Palestine Administration”, to Sir Harry Luke from Pirie-Gordon’s post in Taiz (Yemen). Pirie-Gordon writes: “‘My dear Harry Charles, thank you so very much for your recent letter. Iremain almost aghast at the extent of your “wanderlust”. Brazil and Penang combined with almost permanent residence in Malta and a flat in London seem quite a good way of keeping at bay in suggestion of the humdrum or routine in life”. Pirie-Gordon describes his recent activities, including a ‘visit to stay with our Ambassador in Addis Ababa’, where he found the Ethiopians ‘a friendly courteous people’. Regarding the situation in the Yemen Pirie-Gordon writes: “We have been through a rough summer here during the Crown Prince’s period of Regency with one unpleasant afternoon in Taiz when the army ran amok”. The fact that the country did not have ‘the long awaited revolution then, when the Imam [Ahmad bin Yahya] was out of the country’, has convinced Pirie-Gordon ‘that revolutionaries of the necessary calibre are just not to be found locally’. Of the Imam he writes: “If someone bumps the old man off (no easy undertaking) or if Allah decides that he can do without him no longer then all hell will be loose and the War of the Roses will probably be declared at once.” In the meantime the country will ‘probably slide into a nice quiet anarchy’. Regarding ‘His Majesty’s gracious message’, Luke’s ‘mental imagery’ of ‘the Dragon breathing fire’ is ‘not inapt’. Pirie-Gordon now turns to his own future, which ‘remains shrouded in mystery’. His aim is to secure a ‘particular post’, despite ‘the Ambassador in the country concerned’, who is ‘anxious to have it for an old boyfriend of his own’. The letter ends with Pirie-Gordon describing his ‘highly international social life’, which, he declares, ‘suits me well’.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Taiz [Yemen], 8 October, 1959. Quarto. Two pages. From Sir Harry Luke’s personal library. The letter comes with a publication, edited by Hector Bolitho: “The British Empire”, in which are contained two essays on the Colonial History of the Empire by Sir Harry Luke: I.The Mediterranean Colonies and Aden” / II. “The British Islands of the Pacific”.

104. [Malta Content] – Luke, Sir Harry [Lieutenant-Governor of Malta 1930-1938].

Malta: An Account and an Appreciation. [SIGNED by Sir Harry Luke on the titlepage].

First Edition. [This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. London, George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1949. Octavo. 200 pages. Illustrated. Original Hardcover (without dustjacket). Very good condition.

105. [Mesopotamia / Mosul Content] – [Luke, Sir Harry / Lukach, Harry].

Wonderful example of the research trips Harry Luke made for his later publications: Copy of a full page letter Sir Harry wrote from Mosul to his father in 1924: “My dear Father, only a hearty line in the state of great rush to tell you that we safely accomplished the Journey across the desert from Jerusalem to Damascus to Baghdad, though it took us 5 days instead of 2 and a half owing to breakdown and sticking in the mud etc. At one place, half way across the desert, we stuck for 20 hours. We left Jerusalem on the 9th and got to Baghdad on the 14th at noon and had to leave that same evening for Mosul, as the trains only go twice a week. We had 15 hours in the train to the Northern terminus of the Baghdad Railway and then 75 miles by car. We are being put up by the British Political Officer here, in a charming house. Today I have been out all day in neighbouring Jacobite and Chaldean villages and monasteries and this evening visited one of the persons I had especially come here to Kurdistan to see, namely the hereditary Patriarch of the Nestorians, now a boy of 15, who has been Patriarch for 3 years, an attractive shy lad who not officiating as Patriarch plays football with the other Nestorian children. Tomorrow we go out to the Shrine of the Yezidis, or Devil-worshippers, in the company of their hereditary Emir (who I am told is always tight). We leave here on the 20th for Bagdad and then straight back to Jerusalem.”

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Mosul, 1924. Octavo. One and a half page – Typescript Letter. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.

106. [Mesopotamia / Nineveh / Iraq] – Luke, Harry Charles.

Mosul And Its Minorities [Harry Luke’s personal working copy, identifying it as such also on the endpaper / Manuscript annotations and markings on many pages with corrections and additions, possibly for a second edition].

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. London, Martin Hopkinson & Co., Ltd., 1925. 22,5 cm x 15 cm. IX, 161 pages, 16 illustrations on Plates and three (3) small maps printed within the text. Hardcover / Original publisher’s cloth with gilt lettering on spine. Poor condition of the binding. Spine cracked, almost detached. A few loosely inserted plates. Otherwise in fair condition. From the personal collection of Sir Harry Luke.

107. [Miscellaneous] – Luke, Sir Harry.

Akbar Exhibition – Part I: The Emperor Akbar – Written in Connexion with the Showing of the Akbar Exhibition in Trinidad by Sir Harry Luke / Part II: Catalogue.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Trinidad, June, 1944. Octavo. 15 pages. Stapled. From the personal collection of Sir Harry Luke.

108. [Miscellaneous] – [Luke, Sir Harry / Lukach, Harry].

Manuscript Letter from an unknown sender to Sir Harry Luke regarding St.Paul’s Cathedral in London: ‘Dear Sir, though I heartily approve the changing of the Jesus Chapel into an American Memorial Chapel I find the idea of putting the insignia of the 48 states of USA into the main window of St.Pauls Cathedral nauseating. Should it be necessary to teach to the Americans in the instance, at least let us be honest about it. I would suggest that the dollar sign would be more appropriate. If the insignia of Canada, Australia et. Al. were to be placed in this prominent position it would be a graceful gesture in honour of those who so gallantly came to our aid without question in the hour we needed them most.’ / Drafted response of Sir Harry verso.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Atibaia (Sao Paulo), c.1950. Octavo. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.

109. [Miscellaneous] – [Luke, Sir Harry / Lukach, Harry] Smallbones, R.T [‘Bones’].

Memorandum for Sir Harry Luke relative to the property of R.T.Smallbones on the Island of Coludarz / Inquiry to his Majesty’s Secretary of State regarding the export of a trunk from R.T.Smallbone’s family. R.T.Smallbones writes here to his friend Harry Luke in Sao Paulo about a Trunk with some Heirlooms of his family which must have turned up in Austria after World War Two. Smallbones includes for Luke a copy of a letter which Smallbones had sent to the Secretary of State for Foreign AFfairs at the Foreign Office in London, explaining the History of the Heirlooms of his grandfather George Smallbones (″who was then employed by the Duke of Marlborough as a land agent”). Smallbones hopes that Harry Luke can help him bring the triunk back from Austria, where Luke holidayed regularly in Alt-Aussee.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. Sao Paulo, 1952. Octavo. 3 Letters plus one page inventory. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.

110. [Miscellaneous] – [Luke, Sir Harry / Lukach, Harry].

Sir Harry Luke’s official U.S.Naval Base Pass as Chief Representative of the British Council.

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. 1946. Octavo. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.