Unpublished Memoir of H. B. Arber, Sudan Political Service, 1928–54. University of Durham Sudan Archive, H. B. Arber Memoirs, 736/2/1–27, pp. 1–6

My parents were both of North London middle-class stock. My father’s father was an architect and my mother’s father the managing director of the music firm of J.B. Cramer ² of Bond Street. My father made his living in business connected with the building industry, eventually becoming sales manger in a well-known paint firm. We lived throughout the First War on the Kent-Sussex borders and later moved to the lower Thames Valley.