He was a typical colonial officer who found himself governing Malta because of the two governors he served under, one was sick and abroad most of the time and the other tended to leave things in his hands and go off to the UK.
And Malta, with the war approaching, was not an easy place to be, especially in the height of the controversy between the Italian-loving Maltese and the English-loving ones.
On Friday, Wirt Ghawdex began its series of lectures at the Santa Cecilja Chapel with a lecture on Sir Harry Luke by Dr Paul George Pisani, the son of poet Gorg Pisani.
Sir Harry Luke was Lieutenant Governor of Malta between 1930 and 1938, the crowning of a lifetime serving the British Empire in which he had also served in Jerusalem as ADC to the Governor and sat on the board of inquiry on the Jaffa Riots of 1931.
After more tours of duty around the British Empire, he was sent to Malta in 1930.
Malta then was in the throes of a national controversy between those who wanted to preserve Malta's link with Italy and the Italian culture and those who wanted to replace that with the English language and culture. The controversy also involved the Church which found itself at loggerheads with Lord Strickland on the other side of the linguistic fence.
With the situation heating up in the years prior to World War II, the Italian-loving Maltese came under the influence of Mussolini's Fascists who called Malta 'terra irredenta' (the unransomed land).
Each side used the publication of books and pamphlets to further its arguments. The Italian side purported to show a continuous line of Malta's past linking it to Sicily while the British side purported to show that Maltese was derived from Punic.
As stated earlier, Sir Harry's first governor, Sir David Campbell, was mostly sick and away in the UK, while his successor, Sir Charles Bonham Carter left things in Sir Harry's hands.
As a result of the national controversy, the Maltese Constitution was suspended in 1933 and the Legislature dissolved. It was in these circumstances, and almost by stealth, that Maltese was added as an official language to Italian and English on 16 August 1934, when most Maltese were in holiday mode.
On the one hand, Sir Harry Luke, who loved going to Gozo (where he stayed in a Xlendi villa of a friend of his), was influential for the building of the breakwater in Mgarr Harbour. He also had De Soldanis work on Gozo translated and published, and restored Palazzo Bondi in the Cittadella as well as other old houses. For this he was criticised by Judge Giovanni Bonello's father, Vincenzo, for having ruined what he tried to restore.
Sir Harry later fell under the influence of Major Bertram Ede, who was the M15 boss in Malta. There is some evidence that the telephones of Italian sympathisers were tapped and this may have led (after Sir Harry had left Malta) to the principal Italian sympathisers being interned and exiled to a camp in Uganda when war broke out.
Sir Harry was intensely hated by the Italian sympathisers and the Italian paper Malta savagely rejoiced when he was appointed Governor of Fiji and had to leave Malta, even attacking him for his Jewish blood (his family had Hungarian and Jewish origins as Lukach).
Sir Harry steadfastly opposed Bishop of Gozo Michael Gonzi becoming archbishop of Malta but, after he left, Bishop Gonzi did become archbishop after persuading the Gozitan farmers to bring out their hidden wheat at a time when Malta was suffering hunger.
After he left Malta, Sir Harry did come back to Malta and Gozo including the year before he died. He died in Cyprus, where he sometimes spent the winter, in 1969.