Sir Arnold Talbot Wilson KCIE CSI CMG DSO (18 July 1884 – 31 May 1940) was a British soldier, colonial administrator, Conservative politician, writer and editor.

[1] Wilson served under Percy Cox, the colonial administrator of Mesopotamia (Mandatory Iraq) during and after First World War, including an Iraqi revolt in 1920.

During the war, he volunteered to fight, saying "I have no desire to shelter myself and live in safety behind the ramparts of the bodies of millions of our young men.

After he spent a year attached to the 1st battalion the Wiltshire Regiment in India, he was appointed to the Bengal Lancers and posted to the 32nd Sikh Pioneers, on 18 December 1904.

[7] Wilson famously saved money travelling back to Britain on leave by working as a stoker to Marseilles and then cycling the rest of the way.

"His flashing eyes, his beetling eyebrows, his close-cropped hair, his biblical quotations", recalled Gertrude Bell, the British "Oriental Secretary".

He inspired a younger colleague, Harry Philby, while Hubert Young, a favoured subordinate, found him domineering.

India wanted Mesopotamia as a province; but Arabists from Cox downwards wished for a semi-autonomous policy separate from the Arab Bureau in Cairo.

In Wilson's view the priority was to reconstruct and stabilise the country, by establishing an efficient government and administration as well as a fair treatment and political representation of the various ethnic and religious communities (i.e. in the case of Iraq: Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, of religions such as Islam Shiite and Sunni, Christianity and Judaism).

[citation needed] This political entity covered the planned northern expansion of the newly created country under the British Mandate to include the oil rich Mosul region of northern Iraq, in addition to the Mesopotamian provinces of Baghdad and Basra.

[19] In the summer of 1920 Wilson proposed a compromise, suggesting that Feisal, the former king of Syria, be offered the Iraqi throne.

Deeply disappointed by the turn of events, he left the public service and joined the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as manager of their Middle Eastern operations.

Across the 1930s Wilson undertook a great number of extracurricular activities, such as chairman of the Parliamentary Scientific Committee (forerunner of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee), an active role in the British Science Guild, the British Eugenics Society, the Industrial Health Research Board, and many more.

In 1938 Wilson expressed support for the Spanish Nationalists, saying "I hope to God Franco wins in Spain, and the sooner the better.

However, he defended Jews in conversations with German friends, and expressed disgust over Dachau concentration camp, which he visited in 1936.