Honours
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Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) - 1961
Ronald William Bailey CMG (1917-2010) was a British diplomat who specialised in Middle East affairs. His career culminated in his appointment as British Ambassador to Morocco.
Reading Spanish and French at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he became friendly with an Egyptian minister's son who invited him to Egypt, where they rode out with the Camel Corps and met a former prime minister at King Tutankhamun's tomb. Bailey's first posting was Beirut, where he was a Probationer Vice-Consul, also taking Arabic classes at the American University. [1]
After the fall of France in 1940 he arrived in Alexandria as vice-consul to receive a telegram announcing the arrival next day of 2,000 refugees from Greece. Two thousand mattresses were found; local ladies made corned beef soup; and ambulances were summoned after one of the ships was bombed. Among the refugees were the novelist Lawrence Durrell, King George II of the Hellenes (who shared Bailey's office) and a Greek priest with the name Jesus Christ on his passport – the man said God had called him to Jerusalem, but he was not entitled to a visa.
When the Italians accused British troops of damaging archaeological sites in Cyrenaica, Bailey was sent with Professor Alan Rowe of Alexandria University to investigate, though the Germans were close by. They found one statue whose nose had been shot off by a drunken Polish soldier.
After marrying Joan Gray in 1945, Bailey remained in Egypt. Another spell in Beirut was followed by a posting to Washington, replacing the Soviet spy Donald Maclean. [2]
As Head of Mission in Taiz in Yemen in the early 1960s he survived a knife attack by a night-time intruder. [1] He served as the British Ambassador in Bolivia between 1967 and 1971. [3]
Bailey arrived in Morocco for his last posting just after an attack had been made on the royal aeroplane, during which the king, Hassan II, had been forced to take the controls. But Bailey found it a tranquil appointment, not least because he could speak to the sovereign in Arabic, Spanish and French.
After retiring in 1975 he founded the British Moroccan Society, and became president of the Society for the Protection of Animals in North Africa. He also was elected a Tory councillor in Haslemere and edited a 12-volume Records of Oman 1867-1960.
Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) - 1961An intifada is a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement. It is a key concept in contemporary Arabic usage referring to a legitimate uprising against oppression.
The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, or Jewish exodus from Arab countries, was the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation and migration of 850,000 Jews, primarily of Sephardi and Mizrahi background, from Arab countries and the Muslim world, mainly from 1948 to the early 1970s. The last major migration wave took place from Iran in 1979–80, as a consequence of the Iranian Revolution.
Ronald E. Neumann is an American diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan (2005–2007), Bahrain (2001–2004) and Algeria (1994–1997). He is the son of former ambassador Robert G. Neumann and traveled extensively after college in Afghanistan while his father was ambassador there. Both he and his father served in diplomatic posts in Afghanistan: only one other father-and-son pair, John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams, did the same; both Adamses served as Ministers to Britain. He pronounces his last name Newmann and his name is sometimes seen spelled that way.
Sir Mark Evelyn Heath, a British diplomat, was Her Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See (1980–82), and the first Ambassador to the Holy See (1982–85).
Arabic hip hop is hip hop music and culture originating in the Arabic-speaking world. It is performed in Arabic, English, French, Berber languages (Tamazight), and local Arabic dialects. Like most artists of the genre, the artists from the Arab world are highly influenced by American culture.
The British conquest of Egypt (1882), also known as Anglo-Egyptian War, occurred in 1882 between Egyptian and Sudanese forces under Ahmed ‘Urabi and the United Kingdom. It ended a nationalist uprising against the Khedive Tewfik Pasha. It established firm British influence over Egypt at the expense of the Egyptians, the French, and the Ottoman Empire, whose already weak authority became nominal.
The Sursock family is a Greek Orthodox Christian family from Lebanon, and used to be one of the most important families of Beirut. Having originated in the Greek-Orthodox village of Barbara near Jubail, the family has lived in Beirut since 1712, when their forefather Jabbour Aoun left the village of Barbara. After the turn of the 19th century, they began to establish significant positions of power within the Ottoman Empire. The family, through lucrative business ventures, savvy political maneuvering, and strategic marriages, embarked on what Leila Fawaz called "the most spectacular social climb of the nineteenth century," and, at their peak, had built a close network of relations to the families of Egyptian, French, Irish, Russian, Italian and German aristocracies, alongside a manufacturing and distribution empire spanning the Mediterranean.
Sir Geoffrey Doyne Adams is the current British Ambassador to Egypt, having commenced his post in September 2018, and a member of the British Diplomatic Service. He was Ambassador to the Netherlands from 2013 to 2017.
(Hugh) Glencairn Balfour Paul was a British Arabist and diplomat. He served as the British Ambassador to Iraq, Jordan and Tunisia before becoming an academic at Exeter University.
William Alfred Stoltzfus Jr. was an American Foreign Service Officer and diplomat.
Sir John Walton David Gray was a senior British diplomat.
Sir Michael Scott Weir, was a British diplomat. He was born in Dunfermline, Fife, where his father was a primary school teacher. Weir went on a state scholarship to study oriental languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1942. A year later he joined the Royal Air Force, which sent him to London University to learn Persian. He was then posted as an intelligence officer, including to Burma and Iraq. After demobilisation in 1947, he went to Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the Foreign Service in 1950, and quickly became one of its leading Arabists. His early postings included Bahrain, Doha and Sharjah. Weir's career culminated with his appointment as the United Kingdom's ambassador to Egypt (1979–1985). In 1981, he was sitting behind Egyptian President Anwar Sadat when the president was assassinated at a military parade.
Sir Alan Bedford Urwick was a British diplomat, who served as Serjeant-at-Arms of the House of Commons from 1989 to 1995.
David George Newton was the United States Ambassador to Iraq under Ronald Reagan from 1985 to 1988, and to Yemen under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997.
The third season of Arab Idol premiered on 5 September 2014. Auditions were held in Beirut, Bahrain, Kuwait, Algeria, Cairo, Alexandria, Dubai, Morocco, Palestine, the Iraqi-Kurdish city of Irbil and on the European continent, notably in Paris and Berlin. Emirates Airlines was a major sponsor of season 3. The winner of the season was Hazem Shareef from Syria.
Sir Alexander John Dickson Stirling was a British diplomat who was the UK's first ambassador to Bahrain, later ambassador to Iraq, Tunisia and Sudan.
Jonathan Paul (Jon) Wilks is a British diplomat who was the Ambassador to Iraq from 2017 to 2019, Ambassador to Oman from 2014 to 2017 and Ambassador to Yemen from 2010 to 2011.
Younis Saleh Bahri al-Juburi was an Iraqi traveler, journalist, broadcaster, and writer. He was born in January 1904 in Mosul, Iraq, and was nicknamed "the sailor" for having graduated as a naval officer from a military school in Istanbul. In 1921, he continued his education in the Cavalry Military School in Munich, where he met Adolf Hitler. He is known for writing many books, and has traveled to several countries, and is said to have mastered over 17 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish. At the height of his career, Bahri founded multiple radio stations, including the first Arab radio station, Arab Radio of Berlin, on the European continent in 1939, broadcasting his famous catchphrase "This is Berlin, the neighborhood of Arabs" from Germany to the Arab world. On air, he would make speeches in which he would insult political leaders at the time. Bahri also met some of the most influential and famous people of his time, and was sentenced to death four times. The nature of his work and the multitude of professions he worked made him a highly controversial figure. He took up numerous lines of work, most notably during his time in India, where he was a monk by day and a dancer by night. While there, he still managed to find time to work as a reporter for an Indian newspaper. He was also a Mufti in Indonesia, an Editor in Chief for a newspaper in Java, an Imam in Paris, and an advisor to king Idris of Libya, and was therefore known as "the Legend of the Earth".
Ronald Arthur Burroughs was a British diplomat who served as Her Majesty's Ambassador to Algeria between 1971 and 1973. A letter he wrote to Sir James Craig in 1971 concerning The Spanish Ambassador’s Suitcase became the title of a book by Matthew Parris and Andrew Bryson on amusing unofficial letters of diplomacy. In the book Parris states that in ‘diplomatic circles The Spanish Ambassador’s Suitcase despatch is by impute probably the greatest funny of them all’.