Brigadier-General Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton, KCMG, KBE, CB (6 April 1875 – 11 September 1929), was a British army intelligence officer and colonial administrator, who worked in several countries in the Middle East in the early 20th century. In Egypt, during World War I as an intelligence officer, he supervised those who worked to start the Arab Revolt. In Palestine, Arabia and Mesopotamia, in the 1920s as a colonial administrator, he helped negotiate the borders of the countries that later became Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
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Clayton become an officer in the Royal Artillery in 1895. He was part of the forces sent to the Sudan during the closing stages of the Mahdist War, seeing action in the Battle of Atbara (1898). He then served in Egypt, but in 1910 he retired and left the army to work as private secretary to the Governor-General of Sudan, Sir Francis Reginald Wingate. In 1912, he married Enid Caroline Thorowgood in London, with the ceremony being conducted by the Bishop of Khartoum.[1][2]
During World War I, Clayton worked in army intelligence in Cairo, Egypt, serving in the newly-formed Arab Bureau. In 1914, he sent a secret memorandum to Lord Kitchener, suggesting that Britain work with the Arabs to overthrow their Ottoman rulers. He became Director of Intelligence, and was appointed to the rank of Brigadier-General. In this role, he worked with many of the people that helped to trigger the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks.[1][2]
In Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1935), T. E. Lawrence described Clayton's role as chief of British intelligence in Egypt between 1914 and 1917:
| “ | Clayton made the perfect leader for such a band of wild men as we were. He was calm, detached, clear-sighted, of unconscious courage in assuming responsibility. He gave an open run to his subordinates. His own views were general, like his knowledge: and he worked by influence rather than by loud direction. It was not easy to descry his influence. He was like water, or permeating oil, creeping silently and insistently through everything. It was not possible to say where Clayton was and was not, and how much really belonged to him. | ” |
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—T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1935) |
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Following the war, Clayton worked as an advisor for the Egyptian government, and then worked in colonial administration in the British Mandate of Palestine. He was Civil Secretary of Palestine from 1922 to 1925, at which point he was briefly acting High Commissioner. He was then involved in negotiations with Arab rulers for the 1927 Treaty of Jeddah; he was an envoy to the Sultan Ibd Saud of Nejd,[2] and also undertook a mission to Yemen to negotiate with its ruler Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid ed-Din.[3] From 1928, he was High Commissioner for the British Mandate of Mesopotamia (Iraq). In this role, Clayton had been involved in negotiations over a new Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. His unexpected death, from a heart attack, delayed matters, but the new treaty was eventually signed in 1930.[1][2]