Sir Gawain Bell KCMG, CBE- colonial administrator and diplomat died on July 26 aged 86.He was born on January 21,1909.

AFTER spending three years in Kaduna as Governor of Northern Nigeria, Gawain Bell was paid a rare compliment at the time of Nigerian independence in 1960. The new Government asked him to stay on there for two more years. His Whitehall masters were no less flattering.

Time and again Bell prepared himself for his retirement. But no sooner did he reach for his slippers than the telephone would ring with yet another far-flung assignment.

Khartoum, Kuwait, the Trucial States, Oman and Aden were among the Arab countries which he went to either as colonial civil servant or Foreign Office envoy.

Gawain Westray Bell was born in Cape Town, the only child Of an executive of the New Zealand shipping company who had gone out to South Africa as the company's agent there. The Bells had originated though in the sheep farming uplands of Cumberland and the family returned to this country when Gawain was still a child.

He went to the Dragon School, Oxford, then to Winchester and from there to Hertford College, Oxford, to read modern History. He also joined the university Officers' Training Corps and captained the Oxford rifle shooting team.

Then in 1932, after graduating, Bell joined the Sudan political service with which he was to spend the formative years of his career. Six years later he was seconded to the British administration of the mandate of Palestine and attached to the Palestine Police from which he volunteered for service in the Second World War.

Bell had a colourful war. Serving on horseback with an irregular force of Druze cavalry (they wore mixed clothes picked up second-hand in Levantine souks) he was present at the capture of Suweida, the old Druze capital in Syria, from the Vichy French. In the first volume of his memoirs, Shadows on the Sand, which was published in 1984, he described how they allowed the French to surrender with full honours, marching out with their standards flying behind their band, each man carrying his personal weapon and eight rounds.

Later he helped raise a regiment for the Arab Legion. He was appointed a military MBE in 1942 and was close to the Legion's legendary leader, General Sir John Glubb. A painting of Bell with Glubb hangs in the military museum in Amman.

After the war, however, Bell returned to Sudan, first as a district commissioner then as deputy Sudan agent in Cairo. In 1953 he became deputy civil secretary in Khartoum, then Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior, 1954-55, being advanced to CBE in the latter year.

On leaving Sudan in 1955 he was appointed British political agent in Kuwait, where he narrowly escaped disaster a year later. Terrorists demonstrating against Britain over Suez tried to set fire to his residence, although the blaze was fortunately extinguished before the flames engulfed the largely wooden building.

From 1957, when he was appointed KCMG, until 1962 he was in Nigeria as Governor of the Northern Region. Then came a short spell as Secretary-General of the Council for Middle East Trade.

He worked with Sir Ralph Hone, 1965-66, on drawing up a new constitution for the federation of South Arabia, including Aden, in an effort to stabilise the political situation there. Similar missions in the Tucial States and Oman also punctuated his professional career.

Bell eventually retired in 1970, concentrating thereafter on voluntary work. Among other things he became the vice-president of Lepra) the British Leprosy Relief Association) after seeing so much of the disease while in Kaduna, and was at one time chairman of its executive committee. He was also active in the Anglo-1 Jordanian Society, the Order of St John and was on the governing body of the School of Oriental and African Studies. During his retirement he also acted as part-time chairman for a number of Civil Service selection boards.

The second volume of his memoirs, An Imperial Twilight, emerged in 1989 and he also contributed to many journals and to the dictionary of National Biography.

Bell in no way conformed to the image of imperialist. A man of great courtesy and charm, he was respected throughout the Arab world, not only for his perfect Arabic but for his empathy with Arab culture. The scholar and writer on the region Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who had been with Bell at the capture of Suweida, was a close and lifelong friend.

Gawain Bell is survived by his wife Silvia, a cousin of a colleague in Khartoum, whom he married in 1945, and by their three daughters.

SIR GAWAIN BELL, who has died aged 86, was the expatriate Governor Northern Nigeria, from 1957 to 1962.

It was an. unusual assignment. During the final stages of the transfer of power several African heads of stated opted as a co artsy to retain their British Governor-Generals for a couple of months; but Bell was kept on in a independent territory, for two years. He once described his position as being "without power but perhaps a small measure of influence".

Bell went to Nigeria after a career in the Sudan Political Service, and took with him the valuable experience of having been deeply involved in a previous exercise in African decolonisation, in Khartoum. A consummate diplomat, he was highly effective in handling the powerful premier of Northern Nigeria, Alhaji Sir Ahmad Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, who was prone to vanity.

An only child, Gawain Westray Bell was born in Cape Town on Jan 21 1909. His father, who started with the New Zealand Shipping Company, worked in Basrah and South Africa, where young Gawain spent his first ten years.

Bell (1960): tact

He was then educated at Winchester and Hertford College, Oxford where he read Modern History, followed the beagles, joined the OTC and captained the University Shooting VIII: he was later to shoot for Sudan.

After Oxford, Bell decided he wanted a career abroad, and to be on the safe side he applied for both the Colonial Service and the Sudan Political Service. He was one of eight men selected in 1931 for the SPS corps d'elite.

Bell spent 20 years in the Sudan, a period he described compellingly in his Shadows on the Sand (1983). He also had important outside assignments - in 1938, for instance he was seconded to the colonial administration, in Palestine, where he quickly found himself in the middle of a major security alert.

During the Second World War he served with the Druze Cavalry and the Arab Legion: he was appointed MBE (military) in 1942. In 1944 he was posted to Egypt as Deputy Sudan Agent in Cairo. After seven years he returned to Khartoum first as Deputy Civil Secretary and then in the sensitive post of Permanent Under Secretary to the Ministry of the Interior.

It was rumoured that the Colonial Office was considering Bell .for the Chief Secretaryship of Aden, but since nothing had come of this by 1955 he accepted the Foreign Office's offer of a post as Political Agent in Kuwait.

His five years as Governor of Northern Nigeria form the core of his second memoir, A lmperial Twilight (1989), the rest of which is concerned with his government assignments after 1962 in Aden, Oman and the Trucial States. From 1966 to 1970 he was the last European Secretary-General of the South Pacific Commission.

As a colonial administrator Bell was distinguished by his charm, courtesy and quiet competence. He retired to the National Trust property Hidecote Bartrum Manor by Chipping Camden.

Bell was appointed KCMG in 1957 and KStJ in 1958.

Like others of his generation, he saw himself as among tile last of the Edwardians. He kept his dinner jacket by him at all times, even on a walking tour in Italy, where he boarded in very modest lodgings.

He married, in 1945, Silvia, daughter of Major Adrian Cornwell-Clyne: they had three daughters.

The surviving players in what was once the British Empire crash down like old trees. Few can have had careers as dashing as Gawain Bell who has died aged 86. The very name Gawain had an Arthurian feel and there was a touch of T.E. Lawrence in his connections with the Arab world. That other survivor of another age, Sir Wilfred Thesiger was a contemporary and lifelong friend.

Tall, giving an impression of languor, infinitely courteous, he was the model of what the last British pro-consuls were thought to be, but often were not. He acted the part to perfection as the last Governor of the Northern Region of Nigeria, involving him in all the diplomacy of a colonial hand-over, especially as he carried on as Governor for a couple of years after independence in 1960.

Bell was born in Cape Town, where his father was an official of a shipping company. The family moved to their native Cumberland in 1919 and Bell went to Winchester and Hertford College, Oxford. Having graduated, to go overseas had a certain inevitability. He chose to be an Arabist and was selected for the Sudan Political Service, where he became an accomplished Arabic speaker, with postings in the Eastern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains and the remote north western province of Kordufan.

As a rising star, he was seconded to the sensitive British administration in Palestine, attached to the Palestine Police, first in Gaza, then as commander of the Beersheba Camel Gendarmerie. When war broke out, he volunteered for service, and at the beginning of the Sudan campaign in 1941 was directed to the Druze cavalry. With these remarkable Irregulars he was at the capture that year of the old Druze capital of Suweida from the Vichy French administration which controlled Syria.

When in 1942 that other pillar of Britain's Arab policy (some would say fantasy), Sir John Glubb, was forming his Arab Legion. Bell was a senior assistant and he spent the last three years of the war with the Legion. This period is elegantly recorded in his first volume of memoirs, Shadows On The Sand (1984), which also covers the post-war period, when he returned to Sudan before independence in 1956. When as Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of the Interior he left the Sudanese administration in 1954 he was one of the last remaining British officials.

In 1955, he became the British Political Agent in Kuwait during the Suez crisis when Britain, Arab policy/fantasy crumbled; and in 1957 he was recruited by the Colonial Office, in an exceptional action for that institution, as what was already certain to be the last Governor of Northern Nigeria, a post redolent of history.

It meant working with Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto, a noted autocrat (Harold Macmillan had compared him to Trollope's Duke of Omnium), at the height of his power. The Sardauna, premier of Northern Nigeria, in his My Life wrote very frankly about the problems he had had with Bell's predecessor whom he had found "suspicious of everyone" and unable to work under the changing constitutions. Sir Gawain, said the Sardauna, was the opposite: "He came to us knowing nothing more about the country than he had read in books: he came with an open mind: that was exactly what we wanted."

Southern Nigerians, who blame the British for having imposed Northern rule on the rest of the country include Bell among those responsible for later problems, but by the time he arrived he largely had to play the constitutional role, fading discreetly into the background. His second volume of memoirs, Imperial Twilight (1989) is highly complimentary to the Sardauna, only hinting at frustrations.

He then did a number of jobs in the Middle East, helping to draw up a constitution for the Federation of South Arabia and servicing as Secretary to the South Pacific Commission before retiring in 1970. After he undertook much voluntary work, including the Leprosy Relief Association. Apart from British honours, (a military MBE. a CBE, and a KCMG) he was given the title of "Bey" in 1945 by King Abdallah of Jordan.

His wife Silvia Cornwall-Clyne, survives, him with their three Daughters.