Geoffrey Wheeler - Life

Life

Wheeler followed in the footsteps of his father, an infantry officer, and was commissioned into the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment in 1915. In 1918 he transferred to the Indian army. He initially served in the 67th Gurkha Rifles, and later in the 7th Rajput Regiment. From 1919 to 1925 he was attached to General Staff as an intelligence officer covering India, Palestine and Malta.

In 1926 Wheeler served in Mashhad, Iran as the British Military Attaché and he was stationed in Iraq from 1928-1931. Wheeler spent the next decade and a half in India where he severed in the External Affairs Department, the Ministry of Information and General Staff Army Headquarters.

In 1946 Wheeler was stationed at the British embassy Teheran, Iran (1946–1953), where he served as both the Press and Oriental Councillor until he returned to London in 1950.

He retired from the Indian Army in 1949 as a Lieutenant-Colonel.

In Wheeler 1953 retired from government service and founded the Central Asian Research Centre in London. He served director of the center until 1968 and editor of its journal Central Asian Review, one of the main venues for Central Asian research. He also sat as the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society from 1961-1966.

Wheeler married Irena Bulatova in 1927, who died in 1973. They had one son.

Wheeler died in Surrey, England. His memoirs "Fifty years of Asia" are located at Oxford University, St Antony's College in the Middle East Centre Archive. Wheeler’s career is extensively covered in Myer’s Islam and Colonialism: Western Perspective on Soviet Asia.