Violet Dickson  Hajjiyah Dame Violet Penelope Dickson, DBE (née Lucas-Calcraft; 3 September 1896 – 4 January 1991) was the wife of British colonial administrator H. R. P. Dickson. She lived in Kuwait for 61 years, half of them as a widow, and published several books on the country. She was a keen amateur botanist and had a plant, "Horwoodia dicksoniae", named in her honour. Violet Penelope Lucas-Calcraft was born in Gautby, Lincolnshire, England. Her father was Neville Lucas-Calcraft, a land agent. The 1900 census shows the family were living in Moat House, Gautby: the house was owned by Robert Charles de Gray Vyner, for whom Violet's father worked. She met her husband Harold Dickson (1881 – 1959) in Marseilles, France, shortly after the end of World War I, where she was working in a bank. She travelled out to meet him in India, where he was stationed and where they were married. Shortly afterwards he was posted to Iraq. Harold Dickson served as British Political Agent in Bahrain from 1919-1920. He also served in Persia (present-day Iran). In 1929 he was appointed British Political Agent to Kuwait, and served in this role until 1936. He briefly held this role again in 1941. Violet accompanied him on all these postings, and soon became fluent in Arabic. After his retirement from political service, Harold Dickson worked for the Kuwait Oil Company. She was a keen botanist and published a book on the flora of Bahrain and Kuwait in 1955. She regularly sent wild flower collections to the botanic gardens at Kew Gardens in London, and the desert plant that she introduced to science, "Horwoodia dicksoniae" (known as "khuzama" in Arabic), was named in her honour. She wrote her autobiography, "Forty Years in Kuwait", at the urging of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond series of books. He had travelled to Kuwait in 1960 to research and write a book for the Kuwait Oil Company, and Dame Violet was one of the people he interviewed. Fleming's book, titled "State of Excitement", was never published as the Kuwait Oil Company 'did not care for its tone'; Dickson's book appeared 11 years after Fleming first suggested she should write it. As the wife of a British government figure, she was expected to assist her husband in his duties, primarily at social functions and by accompanying him on some of his travels across the region.