Glencairn Balfour Paul

Who was Glencairn Balfour Paul?

Glencairn Balfour Paul CMG was the British Ambassador to Iraq, Jordan and Tunisia before becoming an academic at Exeter University.

He was born in Moniaive in Dumfriesshire, educated at Lime House school near Carlisle, then Sedbergh School, before going to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1936, to read Classics. He served with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders during World War II before being sent east to Egypt and then on to Sudan to the Sudan Defence Force. After the war he served the Sudan Political Service as a District Commissioner, before joining the Diplomatic Service in 1955.

He was appointed Ambassador to Iraq in 1969, Ambassador to Jordan in July 1972 and then Ambassador to Tunisia 1975-77.

Having retired from the diplomatic service aged 60, Balfour Paul became Director-General of the Middle East Association in London before joining Exeter University as a Research Fellow in the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies. Whilst at Exeter he produced the volume The End of Empire in the Middle East, and the Middle East section of The Oxford History of the British Empire. He also wrote a collection of poetry, A Kind of Kindness.