Doreen Ingrams (1906–1997)

Doreen Ingrams was a daughter of Edward Shortt, a Member of Parliament who served as Home Secretary from 1919 to 1922, and his wife Isabella Stewart Scott. Her first career was as an actress, with friends and contemporaries that included Michael MacLiammoir and Peggy Ashcroft. In 1930, she married Harold Ingrams, a British colonial administrator and scholar, with whom she would have two daughters. She gave up the stage to accompany him to his posting in Mauritius.
In 1934, Harold was sent as political officer to the Protectorate of Aden, where he was charged with investigating conditions in the remote inland region of the Hadhramaut in South Arabia. The couple traveled together and together produced a pioneering report on their findings, Report on the Social, Economic and Political Condition of Hadhramaut (1935), the earliest European account of the territory. The report became the mainspring of greater British involvement in the Hadhramaut and later in the Protectorate as a whole. This trip also inspired Doreen's later memoir, A Time in Arabia (1970). In 1939, Doreen and her husband were jointly awarded the Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal by the Royal Central Asian Society (later known as the Royal Society for Asian Affairs) for their role in helping to bring peace to the Hadhramaut. In 1940, the Royal Geographical Society awarded them its Gold Medal for the contribution that their explorations of the region had made to geographical science and discovery.

Doreen became a Senior Assistant with the BBC Arabic Service from 1956 to 1967. In 1993, she received the Richard Burton Memorial Medal from the Royal Asiatic Society (which had been awarded to Harold in 1945).

In 1972, she published Palestine Papers 1917-22: Seeds of Conflict. During the last decade of her life, she undertook with her daughter Leila to edit and publish Records of Yemen 1798-1960 in 16 volumes. (1993).