Background
Harbottle, Michael Neale was born on February 7, 1917 in Littlehampton, Sussex, England, the son of Thomas Cecil and Kathleen Millicent (Kent) Harbottle.
Harbottle, Michael Neale was born on February 7, 1917 in Littlehampton, Sussex, England, the son of Thomas Cecil and Kathleen Millicent (Kent) Harbottle.
Harbotte studied at Marlborough College from 1930 to 1935. He was rejected by the Navy because he suffered from bunions but he was accepted by the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he studied from 1935 to 1937. He was commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry in 1937.
Harbotte began his thirty-year military career in 1937 with the British Army, Oxfordshire and Buckingham Light Infantry, serving in Italy during World War II. Throughout his military career, he commanded the 1st Battalion Royal Green Jackets and commanded the garrison at Aden before taking his last assignment in Cyprus as Chief of Staff of the United Nations Peace-keeping Force. When he retired in 1968, he had risen to the rank of Brigadier General and had received the Order of the British Empire. After a short stint as chief of security for the British-owned Sierra Leone Selection Trust Ltd., a diamond mining company, Harbottle became a visiting lecturer for several universities speaking on his involvement with peacekeeping operations and the need for peace and disarmament. He authored several books, including The Impartial Soldier, The Knaves of Diamonds, and The Blue Berets. He also collaborated on The Thin-Blue Line: International Peacekeeping and Its Future, New Roles for the Military, Reflections on Security in the Nuclear Age, and Peacekeeper’s Handbook.
Michael was a talented cricket player at Marlborough, and captained the Sandhurst XI. He played cricket for the army until 1959 and captained the team in that year. Harbottle was visiting senior lecturer (peace studies) at Bradford University from 1974 to 1979. He was vice president of the United Nations Association UK from 1974, and general secretary of the World Disarmament Campaign from 1980 to 1982. Harbottle took part in setting up Generals (Retired) for Peace and Disarmament in 1981. In 1983, Michael and his wife Eirwen Harbottle set up the Centre for International Peacebuilding.
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 led to Harbottle becoming the coordinator for the Worldwide Consultative Association of Retired Generals and Admirals from 1991.
(Book by Harbottle, Michael)
(A classic book)
Harbottle married Alison Humfress in 1940, with whom he was to have one son and one daughter. He married Eirwen Simonds in 1972.