Series RAS BMM/13 - 1969 - Brigadier Stephen Hemsley Longrigg

Stephen Helmsley Longrigg was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, and educated at Highgate School and Oriel College, Oxford. He served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in the First World War before returning to Oxford to complete his Masters degree. He then joined the British Administration in Iraq and served as Inspector-General of Revenue between 1927 and 1931. It was during this time that he wrote "Four Centuries of Modern Iraq" (1925), a history of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire. In 1937 he joined the Iraq Petroleum Company in which he continued to work until his retirement in 1951, apart from serving in the Army in the Middle East during World War Two. He was an able linguist which a good knowledge of tribal affairs. He wrote widely about his time in the Middle East.