Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- A Note on Names
- Acknowledgements
- A Personal Note
- Introduction
- Chapter One Family and Youth
- Chapter Two The First World War
- Chapter Three Into the Sahara
- Chapter Four International Banker
- Chapter Five Negotiating with Italy
- Chapter Six West Africa, 1940
- Chapter Seven East Africa in Transition
- Chapter Eight AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories)
- Chapter Nine ‘Jack of Many Trades’
- Conclusion
- Sources and Bibliography
- Index
Chapter Three - Into the Sahara
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- A Note on Names
- Acknowledgements
- A Personal Note
- Introduction
- Chapter One Family and Youth
- Chapter Two The First World War
- Chapter Three Into the Sahara
- Chapter Four International Banker
- Chapter Five Negotiating with Italy
- Chapter Six West Africa, 1940
- Chapter Seven East Africa in Transition
- Chapter Eight AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories)
- Chapter Nine ‘Jack of Many Trades’
- Conclusion
- Sources and Bibliography
- Index
Summary
While waiting for the result of his Foreign Office exams, Rodd visited Trebartha Hall in Cornwall and went walking on the local moors. He wrote to Irene of the impact they had on him, indicating that earlier holidays in Cornwall had inspired his love of nature:
This afternoon on my beloved moors when it rained nearly the whole time I was very wet and happy […] [The Cornish and Devon moors] are covered with stone circles and barrows and remains which I love as they were once my chiefest hobby and study. They are wet and rough as the granite comes out everywhere. They are wild and cold and no one but the hardiest can live on them and I love them.
This suggests that while the desert had begun to stir Rodd's imagination, it also reinforced in him feelings about the outdoor life that had existed before 1914. In having a common love of the Sahara and south-west England, Rodd was similar to Ralph Bagnold. Bagnold was drawn to the landscapes of both Dartmoor and Egypt, as he explained in his memoirs: ‘Egypt fascinated me from the start, just as Dartmoor had done when I was a boy. Both had the strange aura induced by the physical presence of the remote past and also great, bare, trackless expanses where the careless might well get lost.’
When Rodd joined the Foreign Office, Hardinge was permanent undersecretary. He was succeeded in November 1920 by the tough-minded Eyre Crowe, a German specialist who had organised the blockade against Germany during the First World War. Rodd's first position was chargé d’affairs in Rome – a posting that he called a ‘compliment’ to his father. It was a role that consolidated his interest in North Africa, for the remit of his work involved monitoring Libya. The summer of 1919 found him reading about the nomads of Tripolitania. During the following year, he worked on the section of the embassy's annual report on the Italian colonies, which covered developments in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. He visited Tunis and Tripoli in January 1920 and then returned the following month, this time taking in the main coastal cities of Libya and venturing south to some of the towns of the interior.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Life and World of Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell (1895–1978)Geography, Money and War, pp. 45 - 74Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021