Ronald Storrs

Ronald Henry Amherst Storrs , KCMG , CBE (19 November 1881 - 1 November 1955) was an official in the British Foreign and Colonial Office who held several important posts including Governor of Jerusalem , Governor of Northern Rhodesia and Governor of Cyprus . Storrs was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge where he gained a first class degree in the Classical Tripos . He entered the Finance Ministry of the Egyptian Government in 1904 five years later becoming Oriental Secretary to the British Agency, succeeding Harry Boyle in this post. In 1917 Storrs became Political Officer representing the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia as Liaison officer for the Anglo-French mission in Baghdad and Mesopotamia where he met Gertrude Bell and Sir Percy Cox . Lawrence commented in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom : "The first of all of us was Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary of the Residency, the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East, and subtly efficient, despite his diversion of energy in love of music and letters, of sculpture, painting, of whatever was beautiful in the world's fruit... Storrs was always first, and the great man among us". Storrs is credited with a classic example of British understatement when referring to the behaviour of the British toward the many tribal and regional leaders that the British were trying to influence in the Great Game : "we deprecated the imperative, preferring instead the subjunctive or even, wistfully, the optative mood". Storrs served in the First World War, rising to the rank of Colonel. Francis , his younger brother, was an intelligence agent who served in the Mediterranean during the war before his death in 1918. In 1918 Storrs became Military Governor of Jerusalem . In 1919, Storrs was appointed a Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy . In 1921 he became Civil Governor of Jerusalem and Judea . From 1926-1932 he was Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Cyprus . He was one of the six pallbearers at Lawrence's funeral in 1935. In 1937 he published his memoirs Orientations (US edition The Memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs ).¹