Near East

Author's Introduction: 
"Last March I was 'loaned' by the Ministry of Information, for a period of three months, to the Air Ministry, to collect material for certain reports and to take photographs in the Middle East. It was arranged that, apart from the Royal Air For work, I should photograph anything that might be of use to the Ministry of Information. This meant that I came into contact with all three services and saw many sorts of people, organizations and places that ordinarily I should not have seen. It was an ideal job-full of variety and contrast. Many people in England have a vain longing to be transferred to some other climate: most English people in distant parts of the globe can only thing of the day when they will return home: I was lucky enough to have it both ways-to go and to come back." 

Readable text from this respected photographer and journalist of his war time experiences in Cairo, Alexandria, the desert, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lisbon. Loaned by the Ministry of Information to the Middle east for three months, Beaton photographed and wrote on every experience - none of which he thought 'remarkable' from the Shah and Queen of Persia, to medical operations in the desert.