This restored mud-brick house on the seafront was the British Political Agency and the home of Harold and Violet Dickson, whose writing and photographs recorded Kuwait before oil.
Built as a Kuwaiti merchant’s house in the 19th century, with mangrove-pole ceilings and sun-dried mud-brick walls, the building became the British Political Agency. Harold Dickson served as Political Agent from 1929 to 1936, later worked for the Kuwait Oil Company, and lived here until his death in 1959.
His wife Violet, a naturalist who published a book on the plants of Kuwait and Bahrain, stayed on until the invasion of 1990. The house was looted and burned during the occupation and restored in 2000; today it displays photographs from the protectorate era, the Dicksons’ living quarters and an archive on Kuwaiti–British relations.
