After the war he served the Sudan Political Service as a District Commissioner in the Blue Nile and Darfur provinces.
[1] After some days alone he met up with his local guide, Ordugu, who had worked with Wilfred Thesiger on his expedition to the Tibesti Mountains decades earlier.
Following a first posting in Santiago he became First Secretary in Beirut and later Political Agent in Dubai, followed by a brief stint in Bahrain as Deputy to William Luce.
Having retired from the diplomatic service aged 60, Balfour Paul became Director-General of the Middle East Association in London before joining Exeter University as a Research Fellow in the Centre for Arab Gulf Studies.
On the day before his death in July 2008, Balfour Paul was present at the opening of an exhibition at the Center of his photographs of the Trucial States taken in the 1950s and 1960s.