DICKSON (Violet).
Forty Years in Kuwait.
DICKSON'S CELEBRATED MEMOIR OF LIFE IN KUWAIT
A fascinating autobiography describing Dickson’s long residence in Kuwait. It is one of the best memoirs of life there in the decades just before and after the discovery of oil.
The author grew up in Lincolnshire and found herself working for the Marseilles branch of a British bank after the First World War. It was there that she met the young soldier-diplomat H.R.P. Dickson, who was en route to the Persian Gulf via India. A surprise proposal followed and Violet spent the first decade of married life in Iraq, India and Iran.
The Dicksons moved to Kuwait in 1929 when Harold was appointed British Political Agent. The majority of the book covers his residency (up to 1936), later employment with the Kuwait Oil Company (1936-39), Kuwait during WWII and Violet’s continuation there after Harold’s passing in 1959. Her writing on those decades is both a personal account of a remarkably adventurous marriage, and a sensitive exposition of Kuwait’s modern transformation.
