HAMO SASSOON: A BELATED SALUTE

It was as I was digging around Jimena castle, virtually not physically, that the name of Hamo Sassoon kept cropping up. Now there’s hardly a long term resident of Jimena, Spanish or foreign, who doesn’t known of Hamo and acknowledge him with great respect.

I therefore decided to dig deeper to find out more about this man with the famous surname. I was shocked to learn that apart from my good friend at Jimena Pulse, Prospero, and the British Institute in Eastern Africa journal, Azania, nobody had published an obituary on his passing in 2004 and no biography existed either. Hence, in my own humble way, I decided it was time to right this wrong.

As you have no doubt guessed Hamo was related to Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, the English poet and author. Siegfried became famous as a writer of satirical anti-war verse in World War I, earned a Military Cross along the way and later won acclaim for his prose work.

Our Hamo was the great grandson of one of the original Sassoon brothers who went to England. I say our Hamo because this has very much become a family name. The great grandfather married an Italian and Hamo’s grandfather married Theresa Thorneycroft whose brother was the sculptor Hamo Thorneycroft. His sculptures can be seen around London and he was part of the Holland Park Circle. It was he who took the name of Hamo and brought it into the Sassoon family.

Hamo was born in 1925 the son of Michael Thorneycroft Sassoon. Siegfried was Hamo’s uncle who virtually brought him up and gave Hamo most of his tastes such as a love of classical music as his parents were too busy enjoying the gay 20s and 30s. Hamo studied literature at Oxford under Siegfried’s friend Edmund Blunden but then left when the Second World War started to become a conscientious objector. However he soon realised that with a name like Sassoon he had to fight and joined a cavalry regiment - The Inns of Court. Determined to get into the fighting he persuaded his brother, who was a tank officer, to get him into the Royal Tank Regiment. He went through the North African campaign including the Battle of Knightsbridge and was twice blown up in his tank. He reached the rank of lieutenant and in 1946 married his first wife, Flavia (ne Kingscote), who was of a military family.

He was one of the original students at the Middle Eastern School of Arabic Studies in Jerusalem. Most of the students became Ambassadors and Hamo was destined for the Foreign Service. He was desperate to be posted to an Arabic speaking country but with a Jewish name, even though only a quarter Jewish, it was deemed impossible so he ended up in the Colonial Service but only after returning to Oxford where he read - Soil Science.

Hamo became a District Commissioner in Nigeria and the Cameroons where he developed his keen interest in archaeology and through the intervention of Sir Mortimer Wheeler transferred to the Antiquities Department working in the Jos Museum. He became Director of Antiquities in Tanganyika in Dar es Salaam, later in Uganda where he had some nasty scrapes under Idi Amin.

Hamo was later Curator of the Fort Jesus museum in Mombasa (where he lived in the wonderful Portuguese fort). There he was responsible for the underwater excavation of a 16th Century Portuguese Frigate - so he learned to dive. He was Coastal archaeologist for a time before he went to the South Sudan with his future second wife Jean.

It was Jean who we have to thank for bringing Hamo to Jimena because she already had a house in the village – and her artist sister had been there for 30 years. Over a 20 year period this extraordinary man devoted his later years to working on uncovering the history of Jimena’s castle, the wider Campo de Gibraltar and being the impetus behind the annual Jornadas de Historia y Arqueología de Jimena de la Frontera. It is appropriate that he now lies at rest within the castle walls in the old cemetery. If you visit his grave you will read a tribute urging you to look around you to see his memorial. Nobody could have a finer tomb stone and of course on a clear day –you can see his beloved Africa.

That is only half the tale. Hamo’s widow, Jean, also has had a fascinating life. A doctor in her own right - at the University of Nairobi she was in charge of the Material Culture Project in the Institute of African Studies and also an Ethnographer of the National Museum. She worked closely with the archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Leakey who became famous for his academic work centred on the origins of man. That story, though, is for another day!

Many thanks to all the readers of this Blog who have taken the time to contact me with kind comments and to express their great fondness for Hamo. I am reliably told that the Institute for the study of the Campo de Gibraltar based in Algeciras has in the past asked Jimena Town Hall to name a street after Hamo. Regrettably nothing has even been done – perhaps this is a campaign that my good friend Prospero could take up.