F. D. Amr Bey

[7] Amr is widely considered to have raised the level of the sport of squash to new heights through both his outstanding shot-making ability, and his exceptional speed and fitness.

Amr was promoted to the rank of ambassador in August 1945, and always tried to influence King Farouk's decisions in favour of British interests.

[14] In 1951, Egypt's Wafdist government, led by Prime Minister Nahhas Pasha, decided to unilaterally abrogate the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, a move which the United Kingdom deemed illegal and refused to recognize.

[12] After the outbreak of the devastating Cairo Fire of 26 January 1952—which remains unexplained to this day—, there were numerous conspiracy theories regarding the identity of the perpetrators.

Some such as newspaper Al-Masri defended the idea that the fire was started by King Farouk, and accused Amr Pasha and the British Embassy of being part of the plot.

[15] According to this view, the appointment of Amr as the king's special advisor only a month prior to the fire's breakout, as well as the selection of Hafez Pasha Afifi, another pro-British official, as chief of the royal cabinet, were measures aimed at undermining the nationalist Wafd government.

Supporters of this conspiracy theory allege that Amr and Afifi served as intermediaries between the King and the British in their joint planning of the fire.

The new government decided to send an official Egyptian delegation to the funeral of King George VI as a reconciliatory measure towards the United Kingdom.

Amr Pasha was dispatched to London in his capacity as ambassador, along with Prince Muhammad Abdel Moneim, in order to attend the funeral, which was held on 15 February 1952.

After King Farouk's abdication in favor of his infant son Fuad II, the new Regency Council forced Amr into retirement at the end of August of the same year, replacing him as ambassador in London by Mahmoud Fawzi.

According to Mustafa El-Fiki, a career diplomat who met Amr at the Consulate-General in London in 1972, the former squash player and ambassador told him that he did not hold a grudge against the leaders of the 1952 coup, even though they had sidelined him.

[3][20] In addition, Amr is considered part of the "golden age of sports in Egypt," a period spanning the 1940s and 1950s that witnessed numerous famed Egyptian sportsmen, notably swimmers and squash players.

[13] In fact, Amr himself was the "discoverer" of Mahmoud Karim, another Egyptian squash player who dominated the British Open in the postwar period.

Karim recalled in a 1965 interview how he had been secretly practicing squash when he was young at the Gezira Sporting Club, where he worked as a ball boy.

After Karim stated he liked the game, Amr was eager to show him that "squash was only for blue bloods and rich people" and thus challenged him to play with him.

1, stated that Amr "is widely considered to have raised the level of the sport of squash to new heights through both his outstanding racket skills and his exceptional speed and fitness, hence his nickname the "Human Streak of Lightning"."