The Lord Annan | |
|---|---|
 Annan in January 1957. | |
| Born | 25 December 1916 |
| Died | 21 February 2000(2000-02-21) (aged 83) |
| Education | King's College, Cambridge |
| Occupations | British military intelligence officer, author, and academic |
| Member of theHouse of Lords | |
| Life peerage 16 July 1965 – 21 February 2000 | |
Noel Gilroy Annan, Baron AnnanOBE (25 December 1916 – 21 February 2000) was a British military intelligence officer, author, and academic. During his military career, he rose to the rank ofcolonel and was appointed to theOrder of the British Empire as an Officer (OBE). He was provost ofKing's College, Cambridge, 1956–66, provost ofUniversity College London, 1966–78, vice-chancellor of theUniversity of London, and a member of theHouse of Lords.
Annan's publications includeLeslie Stephen (1951)—awarded theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize,Roxburgh of Stowe (1965),Our Age (1990), described by ProfessorJohn Gray in theNew Statesman as a "marvellous compendium of the higher gossip",Changing Enemies (1995), andThe Dons (1999). His best-known essay is "The Intellectual Aristocracy", which illustrates, according toRobert Fulford in theNational Post, the "web of kinship that united British intellectuals (the Darwins, Huxleys, Macaulays, etc.) in the 19th and early 20th centuries."[1]
Annan was born in Gloucester Terrace, London, and was educated at St. Winnifred's School,Seaford in East Sussex, andStowe School.[2] At Stowe, he was head of Temple House, and editor of the school newspaperThe Stoic. He went up toKing's College, Cambridge,[2] in 1935, where he read history, then continued for a fourth year to read law. While at King's, he was recruited into theCambridge Apostles, a secret debating society whose members includedGuy Burgess andMichael Straight, who later became spies for theSoviet Union (seeCambridge Five).[3]
In October 1940, he entered officer cadet training, and in January 1941 was commissioned in the Intelligence Corps and posted toMI14, a department of the War Office, where "Annan was given an important job in operational intelligence studying the movement by rail of German forces".[2] In 1942, he was posted to the Joint Intelligence Staff in theWar Cabinet Office, which was located withWinston Churchill 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 theBritish Control Commission in Germany [de]. Annan was appointed anOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946.[4]
Annan returned to King's in 1946, where he had been elected to a fellowshipin absentia in 1944 at the unusually young age of 28.[2] He joined the economics faculty and lectured in politics and the history of ideas.
In June 1950, he married the author and criticGabriele 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.[2] He was created alife peer on 16 July 1965 asBaron Annan,of theRoyal Burgh of Annan in theCounty of Dumfries.[5]
He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1974.[6]Essex University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1967.[citation needed] He was also a Fellow of theRoyal Historical Society.[citation needed]
He acted as a trustee of theBritish Museum 1963–1980, and of theNational Gallery 1978–85. He also chaired the Royal Commission on Broadcasting, which concluded in 1977 (seeAnnan Committee). He was the first chairman of the Trustee's education committee atChurchill College, Cambridge.
Annan was a signatory to a famous letter published inThe 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.)
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| Preceded by | Provost of King's College, Cambridge 1956–1966 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Provost ofUniversity College London 1966–1978 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Vice-Chancellor of University of London 1978–1981 | Succeeded by |
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