page_title: Ronald Wingate
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Ronald Wingate / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: General Sir Francis Reginald Wingate, 1st Baronet
context_page_description: Sir Ronald Evelyn Leslie Wingate, 2nd Baronet, CB, CMG, CIE, OBE was a British colonial administrator, soldier and author. Wingate was born in 1889 in Kensington, London, and educated at Bradfield College and Balliol College, Oxford before entering the Indian Civil Service. In the Civil Service, he served as an Assistant Commissioner in Punjab and the city magistrate of Delhi.
  During the First World War, Wingate was given a special assignment with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force as an assistant political officer. After the war, he served as British Consul in Muscat, Oman, and helped to negotiate the Treaty of Seeb. He then briefly served in Kashmir before returning to Oman. After his second tour in Oman, Wingate held a variety of positions in British India, including service as the Acting Secretary of the Foreign and Political Department of the Indian Government and Commissioner of Baluchistan.
  At the outbreak of the Second World War, Wingate served with the Ministry of Economic Warfare in Africa and Southeast Asia. Then, in 1942, he joined the London Controlling Section, an organization within the War Cabinet devoted to military deception.
context_section_description: Wingate was the son of Reginald Wingate, a British general who held important positions in Egypt and Sudan, and his wife Catherine Wingate.  Wingate was also a cousin of Lawrence of Arabia and Orde Wingate.  Wingate spent his early childhood in Cairo with his family, but in 1889 he was sent to live in England and enter school.  From a very young age, he hoped to follow his father into military service, and he began his education at Bradfield College planning to join the Royal Navy.  While at Bradfield; however, Wingate discovered that he could not pass the Navy's medical exam because he was severely near-sighted and decided to instead pursue a civil service career.
  Wingate left Bradfield and entered Balliol College, Oxford,  where he went to receive an MA. While at Oxford, Wingate hoped for a career in the Foreign Office, but his father convinced him that a posting abroad would be more favorable financially.  Thus, in 1912, Wingate passed the civil service examinations and entered the Indian Civil Service (ICS).  He was immediately sent back to Oxford, where he spent a year studying Urdu and Persian.  During the Christmas holiday of his year at Oxford, Wingate visited his father in Khartoum and met Mary Harpoth Vinogradoff, the step-daughter of Paul Vinogradoff, a prominent scholar at the University of Oxford.  In his memoirs, Wingate described their encounter as "love at first sight", and the two were engaged six months later before Wingate left for his first posting in India.
  In 1913, Wingate began his ICS career as an Assistant Commissioner in Punjab, posted in Sialkot.  Wingate "worked ceaselessly" at the various tasks of administration during the period, but enjoyed his duties.  In 1916, Mary Harpoth visited Wingate in India and the two were married in Lahore on November 11.  After a honeymoon in the Kangra Valley, Wingate returned to work, becoming an aide de camp and assistant private secretary for the Governor of Punjab, and then the city magistrate of Delhi.
caption: Reginald Wingate, Ronald Wingate's father
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