Harry Victor Frederick Winstone FRGS (3 August 1926 – 10 February 2010), known as "Victor", was an English author and journalist, who specialised in Middle Eastern topics. He wrote biographies of several influential figures in the history of this region.
Victor Winstone worked as a reporter and features writer with weekly journals and a financial features agency from 1947 to 1950. He was an industrial journal editor and press advisor to Royal Doulton and others during the 1950s and 60s. From 1970 to 1982, he was a freelance writer and magazine editor, chiefly of journals about decorative and applied arts (Pottery Gazette, Tableware International, Home and Table, Ambassador). He also wrote for industrial and commercial publications and was the supervisory editor of the English edition of Automobile World (Zurich).
From 1975 to 1990, he was freelance special features writer for The Guardian , book reviewer for The Daily Telegraph , and was a contributor to Connoisseur, The Times , and various specialist journals.
Winstone’s first biography was published in 1976 to positive reviews: Captain Shakespear: A Portrait, a study of the explorer William Shakespear. A series of critically well-regarded books followed, mainly biographies of British figures associated with the nineteenth and twentieth century history of the Middle East, such as Gertrude Bell, Gerard Leachman, Leonard Woolley, Howard Carter and Lady Anne Blunt.
Winstone was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Prior to his death, he lived in Bideford, north Devon, England.
Winstone died from lung cancer on 10 February 2010. [1]
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge and contacts built up through extensive travels. During her lifetime, she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials such as High Commissioner for Mesopotamia Percy Cox, giving her great influence. She participated in both the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (briefly) and the 1921 Cairo Conference, which helped decide the territorial boundaries and governments of the post-War Middle East as part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Bell believed that the momentum of Arab nationalism was unstoppable, and that the British government should ally with nationalists rather than stand against them. Along with T. E. Lawrence, she advocated for independent Arab states in the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and supported the installation of Hashemite monarchies in what is today Jordan and Iraq.
Henry Canova Vollam Morton, was a journalist and pioneering travel writer from Lancashire, England. He was best known for his many books on London, Great Britain and the Holy Land. He first achieved fame in 1923 when, while working for the Daily Express, he covered the opening of the Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter.
Major-General Sir Percy Zachariah Cox was a British Indian Army officer and Colonial Office administrator in the Middle East. He was one of the major figures in the creation of the current Middle East.
Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960.
Anne Isabella Noel Blunt, 15th Baroness Wentworth, known for most of her life as Lady Anne Blunt, was co-founder, with her husband the poet Wilfrid Blunt, of the Crabbet Arabian Stud in England and the Sheykh Obeyd estate near Cairo. The two married on 8 June 1869. From the late 1870s, Wilfrid and Lady Anne travelled extensively in Arabia and the Middle East, buying Arabian horses from Bedouin tribesmen and the Egyptian Ali Pasha Sherif. Among the great and influential horses they took to England were Azrek, Dajania, Queen of Sheba, Rodania and the famous Ali Pasha Sherif stallion Mesaoud. To this day, the vast majority of purebred Arabian horses trace their lineage to at least one Crabbet ancestor.
William Gifford Palgrave was an English priest, soldier, traveller, and Arabist.
Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah "the Great" was the seventh ruler of the Sheikhdom of Kuwait from 18 May 1896 until his death on 18 November 1915. Mubarak ascended the throne upon killing his half-brother, Muhammad Al-Sabah. Article 4 of the constitution of the modern State of Kuwait stipulates that the Emir of Kuwait must be a ruling Al-Sabah family member that is a descendant of Mubarak.
Hedon, sometimes spelt Heydon, was a parliamentary borough in the East Riding of Yorkshire, represented by two Members of Parliament in the House of Commons briefly in the 13th century and again from 1547 to 1832.
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley was a British archaeologist best known for his excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavated in a methodical way, keeping careful records, and using them to reconstruct ancient life and history. Woolley was knighted in 1935 for his contributions to the discipline of archaeology. He married the British archaeologist Katharine Woolley.
Captain William Henry Irvine Shakespear, was a British civil servant and explorer who mapped uncharted areas of Northern Arabia and made the first official British contact with Ibn Sa'ud, future king of Saudi Arabia. He was the military adviser to Ibn Sa'ud from 1910 to 1915, when he was shot and killed in the Battle of Jarrab by Ibn Shraim. He was buried in Kuwait.
Lieutenant-Colonel Gerard Evelyn Leachman, CIE, DSO was an English soldier and intelligence officer who travelled extensively in Arabia.
Lieutenant Colonel Harold Richard Patrick Dickson was a British colonial administrator in the Middle East from the 1920s until the 1940s, and author of several books on Kuwait.
Hajjiyah Dame Violet Penelope Dickson, DBE was the wife of British colonial administrator H. R. P. Dickson. She lived in Kuwait for 61 years, half of them as a widow, and published several books on the country. She was a keen amateur botanist and had a plant, Horwoodia dicksoniae, named in her honour.
Zahra Freeth was a British author who wrote primarily about the Middle East. She was the daughter of H. R. P. Dickson and Dame Violet Dickson.
Percy Edward Newberry was a British Egyptologist.
Zahra is an Islamic female given name of Arabic origin. It means ‘beautiful, bright, shining and brilliant’. The name became popularized as a result of being the name of the Islamic prophet Muhammad’s daughter, Fatimah al-Zahra.
The Emirate of Jabal Shammar, also known as the Emirate of Haʾil or the Rashidi Emirate, was a state in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula, including Najd, existing from the mid-nineteenth century to 1921. Jabal Shammar in English is translated as the "Mountain of the Shammar". Jabal Shammar's capital was Ha'il. It was led by a monarchy of the Rashidi dynasty. It included parts of modern-day Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Jordan.
The Ministry of Oil is one of the governmental bodies of Kuwait and part of the cabinet.
Ministry of Finance is one of the governmental bodies of Kuwait and part of the cabinet.