My memory of events, more than 50 years ago as I write, is sometimes very clear, though I have learned not to trust it. I have scarcely any papers relating to that time, only a few personal letters. This is a personal account and as accurate as I can make, but if research shows that what I wrote at the time in my various capacities contradicts it, it is the written account that should be trusted.

In 1965 I was lent by the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office with the grand title of secretary-general of a constitutional commission which was to consider the future of Aden and the Aden Protectorate. The previous October a Labour government had taken office. One of their headline policies was withdrawal from “east of Suez”. Aden was a political hot potato, taking up a great deal of Prime Minister Harold Wilson's time and efforts, and also those of Denis Healey (Defence Secretary) and George Brown (Foreign Secretary). The Colonial Office which was still responsible for Aden was by now very small, much reduced from its glory days, but the Colonial Secretary still had a place in the cabinet. Anthony Greenwood had this thankless job, though I guess the policy came from the heavyweights.

My boss, leader of the constitutional commission, was Sir Evelyn Hone. He had been the last governor of Northern Rhodesia before it became Zambia, Rhodesian born, soft-spoken, a sharp mind and a good listener, and was considered an expert on the constitutional aspects of decolonisation. My job was to act as his assistant, including as his interpreter. I had read Arabic at Oxford, topped up my classical Arabic with modern and colloquial at the Foreign Office-run Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies in Lebanon, and spent a year in my first job as acting Political Officer in Abu Dhabi where almost nobody spoke English.

Sir Evelyn and I spent what seemed a leisurely few weeks getting to know South Arabia. He had the use of an aircraft so we went all over the territory and met the political movers and shakers, from the smooth city slickers of Aden, full of anti-colonialist jargon and pretty obviously in the pay of President Nasser of Egypt, to the unreformed tribal shaikhs of the protectorate, some of them very unreformed indeed but charming with it. I lived in the picturesque but rundown Crescent Hotel and had time for a bit of personal exploration. I got to grips with the curious Aden dialect of Arabic well enough to make a few friends, one of them the lad who was reputed to have thrown the grenade at the Governor which triggered the emergency in 1963; he had been chosen to do it because he was an athlete, or rather a footballer (they had no cricketers).