Harry Luke

Sir Harry Charles Luke KCMG GCStJ (born Harry Charles Lukach) (December 1884 - 11 May 1969) was an official in the British Colonial Office. He served in Barbados, Cyprus, Transcaucasia, Sierra Leone, Palestine, Malta, the British Western Pacific Territories and Fiji. He is the author of some books on several of these countries.

Biography

His father, J.H. Luke (né Lukács) was an Austro-Hungarian, but later acquired American citizenship; his mother was a Polish Catholic of the minor nobility.

He was born in London in 1884 and educated at Eton College and at Trinity College, Oxford, of which he became an Honorary Fellow in 1952.

Luke's first official appointment was as Private Secretary (1908) and Aide-de-Camp in Barbados, except for a period during May–July when he was attached to the Colonial Office. He served as Private Secretary to the High Commissioner of Cyprus (1911–1912) and as Commissioner of Famagusta (1918–1920).

From 1909 to 1911 he was also second lieutenant in the London Yeomanry.

During World War I, he served as Commander of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on the Syrian Coast, and as a Political Officer on the staff of Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss; for his services he was awarded the Italian medal for military valour.

In 1919 he was appointed Political Officer to the Admiral of the Fleet, Sir John de Robeck.

In 1920 he spent six months (from April to September) as British Chief Commissioner in Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan).

In 1921, he was assistant Governor of Jerusalem and was appointed a member of the Haycraft Commission, which was established by Sir Herbert Samuel to investigate the cause of the riot which started in Jaffa on 1 May that year, and into the affairs of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

From 1924 to 1928 he held the post of Colonial Secretary of Sierra Leone.

He was subsequently appointed to be the acting High Commissioner to the Government of Palestine. He assumed this position on 19 July 1928 and held it until 6 December 1928.

In August 1929, acting as deputy to Sir John Robert Chancellor, he attempted to mediate an agreement between Jewish and Arab leaders, without success.

Later he was Lieutenant Governor of Malta (1930–1938) and Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of the British Western Pacific Territories from 16 September 1938 to 21 July 1942.

On his retirement from the Colonial Service, in 1943, he was for three years Chief Representative of the British Council in the Caribbean.

He died in Cyprus, where he often spent the winter, on 11 May 1969.

Family

Luke married, in 1918, Joyce Evelyn Fremlin, the daughter of Henry James Leigh Fremlin and his wife, Maud Evelyn Deane (marriage dissolved by divorce in 1949). They had two sons, Peter Ambrose Cyprian ("Peter") Luke, born in 1919, and Michael Charles Deane ("Michael") Luke, born in 1925.

Honours

• CMG (1926), Knight (1933), Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (1939)

Luke's published works

• The Fringe of the East. Journey through Past and Present Provinces of Turkey, (Macmillan & Co), 1913 (First published under the name Harry Charles Lukach)
• The City of the Dancing Dervishes, 1914
• Cypriote Shrines, (Faith Press), 1920
• The Handbook of Cyprus (London), 1920 (together with D.J. Jardine)
• Cyprus under the Turks 1571-1878, (Oxford University Press), 1921
• Report of the commission appointed by the government of Palestine to inquire into the affairs of the orthodox partiarchate of Jerusalem, 1921 (together with Anton Bertram)
• The handbook of Palestine, 1922 (together with Edward Keith Roach)
• Anatolica, (London), 1924
• Mosul and its minorities, 1925
• Prophets, Priests and Patriarchs: sketches of the sects of Palestine and Syria, 1927
• In the Margin of History, 1933
• An Eastern Checkerboard, 1934
• More Moves on an Eastern Checkerboard, 1935
• The Making of Modern Turkey, (Macmillan & Co), 1936
• The British Pacific islands, 1944
• From a South Seas Diary, 1938-1942, 1945
• "Aden", in: The British Empire, by Hector Bolitho, 1948.
• Malta, an account and an appreciation, 1949
• Caribbean Circuit, 1950
• Aegean, Cyprus, Turkey, Transcaucasia and Palestine (1914-1924), 1953
• Cities and Men: an autobiography - Vols. 1 & 2, 1953
• Queen Salote and her Kingdom, 1954
• The Tenth Muse: A Gourmet's Compendium, 1954 (a cookery book)
• The Old Turkey and the New: from Byzantium to Ankara, 1955 (First published in 1936 under the title The Making of Modern Turkey)
• Cities and Men: an autobiography, Vol. 3, 1956
• Cyprus: a Portrait and an Appreciation, (Harrap), 1957

Government offices
Preceded by Herbert Onslow Plumer	High Commissioner of Palestine (acting) 1928	Succeeded by Sir John Robert Chancellor
Preceded by Sir Arthur Frederick Richards	High Commissioner for the Western Pacific 1938–1942	Vacant Title next held by Sir Alexander Grantham
	Governor of Fiji 1938–1942	Succeeded by Sir Philip Euen Mitchell

See also

• List of Governors of Fiji
• British Mandate of Palestine#British High Commissioners for Palestine

External links

• Archival material relating to Harry Luke listed at the UK National Archives
• Papers of Sir Harry Charles Luke at the Bodleian Library, Oxford
• Peerage page
• Rulers of Fiji
• Picture of Harry Luke in Palestine