Walter Burton Harris

Walter Burton Harris (29 August 1866 – 4 April 1933) was a journalist, writer, traveller and socialite who achieved fame for his writings on Morocco, where he worked for many years as special correspondent for The Times. He settled in the country at the age of 19, eventually building himself a fine villa in Tangier where he lived for much of his life. His linguistic skills and physical appearance enabled him to pose successfully as a native Moroccan, travelling to parts of the country regarded as off-limits to foreigners. He wrote a number of well-regarded books and articles on his travels in Morocco and other countries in the Near and Far East. Harris also played a significant, though not always constructive, role in the European diplomatic intrigues that affected Morocco around the turn of the 20th century.

Harris was born in London as the second son of a prosperous shipping and insurance broker, Frederick W. Harris. His siblings included Sir Austin Edward Harris, who became a noted banker, and Frederick Leverton Harris, a British Member of Parliament. He was educated at Harrow School and (briefly) at Cambridge University and had already managed to travel around the world by the age of 18.

In 1887 he accompanied a British diplomatic mission to Morocco and settled in Tangier at the age of 19. He was briefly married to Lady Mary Savile, the daughter of the 4th Earl of Mexborough from 1898 to 1906, but the marriage was annulled on the grounds of non-consummation.He was independently wealthy, living off a personal allowance and a stipend from The Times, and was an ambitious social climber who associated with royalty and high-ranking politicians.

Harris was a fluent speaker of French, Spanish and Moroccan Arabic, and his physical features were such that he could pass for a native Moroccan. This enabled him to travel undetected into the interior of Morocco, which was at the time off-limits to outsiders, and thus see and describe places that no European had been to. During his travels he disguised himself as an inhabitant of the Rif, looking (as The Times put it) like "the complete fanatical-looking type, with shaven head but for a foot-long lock hanging from the crown, red guncase for turban, short brown jelab, bare reddish-tanned neck and legs, carrying a long native musket, and glancing furtively as he went, just as such men from home do."

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