Lieutenant-Colonel David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer (December 24, 1876 in Dundee-1962) was a member of the British Indian Army, a political official in the British Indian government and a noted linguist. [1] The Indian Political Service extended to the Middle East, and he was British Political Representative in Cairo during the First World War.[2]
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Lorimer was born near Dundee and was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman Robert Lorimer and his wife Isabella Lockhart Robertson. He was educated at the High School of Dundee. His mother's family had long resided in India and in 1896 David Lorimer relocated to India following completion of his military training at Sandhurst. His brothers Gordon and Bert also worked in the civil administration in the Indian Political Service.[3] He also had a sister, Hilda.
In 1910 Lorimer married Emily Overend of Dundee. Emily Overend Lorimer (1881-1949) was a noted journalist, writer and lecturer in German philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford.[4] In the late 1920s and 1930s she became on of the leading commentators in Britain on Nazism and translated works of Adolf Hitler. [5]
From 1898 to 1903, Lorimer served in the Q.V.O. Corps of Guides, including a stint from 1901 to 1903 with the Khyber Rifles. In 1903, he entered the Indian Political Service. During his career, he held various offices, including Vice Consul in Arabia (1903-1909) and consul in Kerman and Balochistan (1912-1914 and 1916-1917). Lorimer was the Political Agent in Gilgit from 1920-24.[6] During World War I, he served in Cairo. In 1924, he left the political service.
In addition to his military and political activities, Lorimer a noted scholar of the peoples of Hunza and Gilgit . He worked as a linguist with the languages of Iran and Pakistan, including Khowar, Shina, Bakhtiari, Wakhi and the Persian dialects of Kerman and Gabri. He wrote a standard work on Burushaski, a language spoken only in the Karakoram in what is today Pakistan.
Lorimer was awarded the Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 1933-1935 and in 1953 he became an honorary member of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. His notes and correspondence are now kept in a library at SOAS and in the collections of the British Library.[7]