In Hot Aden

Press, Volume C, Issue 29674, 18 November 1961, Page 3

In Hot Aden

The Sultans Came to Tea. By June Knox-Mawer. John Murray. 218 pp. Illustrated.

In this entertaining and informative book of the experiences of a young wife of a newly appointed Magistrate in Aden, two Sultans (educated in England) within the Protectorate, become friendly with the author and her husband, and though proArab and admirers of President Nasser of Egypt, they rule under the protection of the British Government. The author, a journalist, represented a London newspaper during her husband’s term in Aden. The English colony is described with a touch of humour which highlights the lunches, dinner parties. races and other diversions to use up time and to express their “way of life.” The Arabs come under the observant and sympathetic gaze of the author. Her retentive memory provides delightful sketches not only of the Sultans and their retinues but also the villagers, cotton workers, merchants and harems.

Interesting sidelights of life in hot Aden show that there are no mosquitoes in the Protectorate and that abstinence from alcohol, as demanded by their religion, is strictly observed by the Arabs. On the other hand, “Europeans only too obviously find it difficult to relax without alcoholic assistance.”

Written with felicity and the facility of a trained journalist, this work picturing as it does the life in Aden, the second largest British port in the world, is not only entertaining but valuable. The illustrations are excellent.