Noel Gilroy Annan, Baron Annan OBE (25 December 1916 – 21 February 2000) was a British military intelligence officer, author, and academic. During his military career, he rose to the rank of

colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge o ...

and was appointed to the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

as an Officer (OBE). He was provost of

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...

, 1956–66, provost of

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

, 1966–78, vice-chancellor of the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

, and a member of the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminste ...

. Annan's publications include ''Leslie Stephen'' (1951)—awarded the

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Uni ...

, ''Roxburgh of Stowe'' (1965), ''Our Age'' (1990), described by Professor John Gray in the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...

'' as a "marvellous compendium of the higher gossip", ''Changing Enemies'' (1995), and ''The Dons'' (1999). His best-known essay is "The Intellectual Aristocracy", which illustrates, according to Robert Fulford in the '' National Post'', the "web of kinship that united British intellectuals (the Darwins, Huxleys, Macaulays, etc.) in the 19th and early 20th centuries."

Early life and education

Annan was born in Gloucester Terrace, London, and was educated at St. Winnifred's School, Seaford in East Sussex, and Stowe School. At Stowe, he was head of Temple House, and editor of the school newspaper ''The Stoic''. He went up to

, in 1935, where he read History, then continued for a fourth year to read Law. While at King's, he was recruited into the

Cambridge Apostles The Cambridge Apostles (also known as ''Conversazione Society'') is an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge founded in 1820 by George Tomlinson, a Cambridge student who became the first Bishop of Gibraltar.W. C. Lubenow, ''The Ca ...

, a secret debating society whose members included

Guy Burgess Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, and a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War era. His defection in 1951 ...

and

Michael Straight Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB. Early life Straight was born in New Yo ...

, who later became spies for the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

(see

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...

Military career

In October 1940, he entered officer cadet training, and in January 1941 was commissioned in the Intelligence Corps and posted to

MI14 MI14, or British Military Intelligence, Section 14 was a department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence. It was an intelligence agency of the War Office, which specialised in intelligence about Germany. Originally part of MI3, d ...

, a department of the War Office, where "Annan was given an important job in operational intelligence studying the movement by rail of German forces." In 1942, he was posted to the Joint Intelligence Staff in the War Cabinet Office, which was located with

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

in his bunker. In 1944, he was transferred to Paris to become the French liaison officer with British military intelligence, later becoming a senior officer in the political division of the . Annan was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946.

Academic career

Annan returned to King's in 1946, where he had been elected to a fellowship ''in absentia'' in 1944 at the unusually young age of 28. He joined the economics faculty and lectured in politics. In June 1950, he married the author and critic Gabriele Ullstein, and they had two daughters – Lucy (born 1952) and Juliet (born 1955). He was elected Provost of King's in 1956. In 1966, he took up the post of Provost of University College London, then from 1978 until 1981, was Vice-Chancellor of the University of London – the first person to take on the role full-time. He was created a life peer on 16 July 1965 as Baron Annan, ''of the Royal Burgh of Annan in the County of Dumfries''. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1974.

Essex University The University of Essex is a public research university in Essex, England. Established by royal charter in 1965, Essex is one of the original plate glass universities. Essex's shield consists of the ancient arms attributed to the Kingdom of Ess ...

awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1967. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Committees

He acted as a trustee of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

1963–1980, and of the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director ...

1978–85. He also chaired the Royal Commission on Broadcasting, which concluded in 1977 (see Annan Committee). He was the first chairman of the Trustee's education committee at Churchill College, Cambridge.

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * Annan was a signatory to a famous letter published in ''The Times'' in 1958 which precipitated the establishment of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, which campaigned for homosexual law reform. (See Patrick Higgins, ''Heterosexual Dictatorship: Male Homosexuality in Post-War Britain'', London: Fourth Estate Ltd; 1996, p. 125.)

Early life and education

Military career

Academic career

Committees

Bibliography

See also

References

Further reading