Small Room in Clarges Street: War-Time Lectures at the Royal Central Asian Society, 19421944

During the darkest days of the Second World War a select group of people gathered together in Mayfair to listen to a series of secret lectures organised by the Royal Central Asian Society (now the Royal Society for Asian Affairs). Lecturers and their hand-picked audience examined fast-moving events in the Middle East, Persia and Russia with the intention to propose strategies for Britain’s post-war international role. The lecturers were chosen for their inside knowledge of these countries: a British General who had visited Russia’s front-line held against the German invasion; an RAF officer who was in Iraq during the pro-German coup by Rashid Ali, and the subsequent defence of the Habbaniya air base; a Persian-speaking British diplomat stationed in Teheran; a Mancunian of Lebanese descent who spoke frankly about Arab hopes and fears; a Home Officer advisor sent to Moscow to inspect its fire-watching arrangements; and a Polish countess forcibly transported to a collective farm in Siberia, among others. Secrecy surrounded these lectures many of the scripts were marked Secret’ or Confidential’; they were not published in the Society’s Journal, and the audience was warned not to reveal the topics discussed outside the Clarges Street premises. The discussions which followed the lectures were held in the knowledge that frank views could be freely expressed, and are included in this volume. Although so much has changed in the international arena, these seventy-year old lectures, only recently rediscovered in the Society’s Archives, have a peculiar poignancy and relevance in understanding today’s unquiet Middle East and how war-time events and strategies were to shape post-war policy with regard to Arab nationalism and Arab unity.