OPM gives talk to Sixth Form

Published: 03 February, 2011

When Anthony Harris left Plymouth College in 1960 he never imagined it would be more than 50 years before he returned.

Last week the former Deputy Head Boy made his long overdue return when he came back to talk to the Sixth Form about his life and work since leaving the school.

An Under-Officer in the Plymouth College Combined Cadet Force and Captain of the shooting team, Anthony won a Stapledon Exhibition to read Classics at Exeter College, Oxford, where he shot for Great Britain on a number of occasions.

From here Anthony joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and went to Lebanon to study Arabic at the Foreign Office Arabic School.  Postings as Oriental Secretary in Jedda and Information Office in Khartoum followed.  He returned to the FCO in 1972 as Desk Officer for the Gulf States and acted as interpreter for, among others, HM The Queen and Prime Minister Edward Heath during official visits to London by Arab leaders.

In 1975 Anthony was sent to Abu Dhabi as Deputy Head of Mission and three years later he moved to the UN in Geneva.  Seconded to the MOD in 1982 as Regional Marketing Director, Middle East, he held the post of Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission in Cairo from 1986-1990.

Anthony returned to the FCO as Head of Information where he was responsible for inter alia for international press relations during the first Gulf War.  His last posting was as HM Ambassador to Abu Dhabi until 1998.

After a couple of years with London merchant bank, Robert Fleming, Anthony went to Dubai to set up a business consultancy, advising more than a dozen companies operating there over the last decade.  He is now Head of the Regional Office of Robert Fleming Insurance Brokers (RFIB), which involves travelling widely in the Levant and Gulf States.  Anthony is currently setting up another office for RFIB in Riyadh and continues to advise a number of companies on their Middle East operations.

Of his return to Plymouth College Anthony said: "I was quite moved by the experience of returning to the school after a complete break of more than 50 years.  It was a mixture of the familiar and the new.  The modern facilities, like the indoor pool and the new hall, were particularly striking, as were my memories of morning assembly and reading the lesson in the Memorial Hall, shooting on the school range and playing cricket on the playing fields.

"I was very touched by the warmth of the welcome I received.  It was an unforgettable experience and I must now try to restore some links with Plymouth and the school and not let the years rush by as I have previously done."

Photograph L to R: Jon Dawe, Simon Wormleighton (Headmaster), Bianca Richards, Chris Robinson (Chairman of Governors), Anthony Harris, Mike Turpitt (OPM President), Emily Coelho, Jonathan Shields (Head of Sixth Form), Tom Clenaghan