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

Correspondance of 10 letters between Sir Harry Luke and Commander J.R. Clay of Clay’s Marine Steering Gear Limited on behalf of his father J.H.Luke, who was a partner in the company and held a patent on Steering Gear used in the ships of the ‘White Star Line’ from which J.H. Luke hoped to get an income. Sir Harry took over the correspondance from his father who fell ill during the year 1930. The collection of letters is very interesting in regard of the company’s relation ot The Stottpool Steamship Company’ – the fate of the company being discussed in the paper as ‘COMPANY WITHOUT CAPITAL’ – Nothing coming in or going out (Owner were: J.H.Luke / Sir A. Henry Mc Mahon / Comm. J.R.Clay / Lord Southborough / Sir Harry receives information from Commander Clay in a letter from July 17th, 1930 regarding the fact that ‘We have not had any further orders for the Gear, but as previously mentioned to you there is another Motor Vessel similar to the ’″Britannic” building in Belfast for the White Star Line, and we should be able to get the order for her’. The correspondance goes into detail: ‘You will note from the pamphlet which i prepared that the new helm order will become law on the 30th of June 1931. When in Belfast on the trials of the “Brittanic” I met one of the Committee of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea…..He represents the Gyro Compass Company in London and i hopeto bring him to see you as I consider he will be able to help us considerably by recommending the adoption of the Steering Gear Device.’ / The correspondance mainly between Liverpool and Sir Harry Luke’s summer – address in Alt-Aussee, Steiermark, Austria. / The correspondance also includes a manuscript letter in which Sir Harry writes about his fathers illness and wonders if it is really worthwhile to renew the patent in light of the fact ‘that for so many years hardly any line except th White Star Line has adopted the Gear’. [The collection also includes a further 8 letters and also the papers of the estate of Sir Harry’s father. Sir Harry corresponds with his families solicitor, Oliver Dayrell Paget Paget-Cooke and besides the technicalities of the estate also encourages him to visit Malta / one page also on stationery of “The Palace – Malta”].

[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.

112. [Malta Content] – [Luke, Sir Harry / Lukach, Harry] Deedes, Brigadier General Sir Wyndham Henry.

Manuscript Letter Signed (MLS) from Wyndham Deedes to Sir Harry Luke. Deedes congratulates Luke on his new appointment [Luke had just become Lieutenant Governor of Malta (he remained at that post from 1930-1938) ].

[This item is part of the Sir Harry Luke – Archive / Collection]. London / University House, 1930. Octavo. 1 Letter with original envelope. From the private collection / library of colonial governor, diplomat and historian, Sir Harry Luke.

113. [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.

114. [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.

115. [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”.

116. [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.

117. Martin, Robert Montgomery.

The British Colonies; Their History, Extent, Condition and Resources. 6 Volumes bound in 3 Volumes (Text only without maps and illustrations). The Set includes: Volume I – British North America / Volume II – Australia / Volume III – New Zealand, Tasmania / Volume IV – Africa and the West Indies / Volume V – British India / Volume VI – Ceylon, East India and Meditteranean Settlements /

First Edition. London and New York, The London Printing and Publishing Company [that was J. and F. Tallis], no year (c. 1850). Quarto (20 cm x 27 cm). Volume I (British North America [Canada / USA]): Frontispice illustrated titlepage, XXIV, 360 pages with pages 1 – 9 missing / Volume II (Australia): pages 361 – 744 pages / Volume III (New Zealand / Tasmania): II, 384 pages. / Volume IV (Africa and the West Indies): II, 188 pages / Volume V (British India): II, 564 pages with pages 455 – 456 missing / Volume VI (Ceylon, East India and Mediterranean Settlements): II, 172 pages. Hardcover / Original, decorative publisher’s halfleather with gilt lettering and ornament to spines. Bindings rubbed but overall in firm and very good condition with only minor signs of wear. All maps and illustrations besides one illustration removed by a previous owner. In the course of removal of maps and illustrations, one page slightly torn and 11 pages of text missing. This is still one of the most important text-sources of British Colonial History, itsevaluation in Britain and a plethora of data on economical and political impact the Colonies had for the former Empire. No other contemporary 19th century publication includes details on colonial produce, movement of population and local History from Tasmania to Quebec, from Hong Kong to Heligoland (Helgoland), and in general on the depition of “England, the ‘Nursing Mother’ of Nations” (Introductory page XXIV by Montgomery Martin).

118. [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.

119. [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.

120. [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.