Wallace Lyon was Provincial Administrator and Administrative Inspector in northern Iraq - an area known unofficially as 'Kurdistan' - between 1918 and 1945. His job was to administer what at the time was a fairly wild and remote province, while protecting the Kurds from a predatory and unstable Iraq and safeguarding British imperial interests in the area. The pushing would have been impossible but for an in-depth understanding of natural respect for the family, tribal and religious ties that defined the area's complex social structures. Nor would it have been possible without Lyon's personal...