Background
Noel Gilroy Annan was born on December 25, 1916, in London, United Kingdom. He was a son of James Gilroy Annan and Fannie Quinn.
Stowe School, Stowe, Buckingham MK18 5EH, United Kingdom
Noel studied at Stowe School.
(In January 1941, Noel Annan was assigned to Military Inte...)
In January 1941, Noel Annan was assigned to Military Intelligence in Whitehall, where he was to be involved for the next four years, at the center of Britain's secret war planning, in the crucial work of interpreting information, supplied by a network of agents throughout occupied Europe. Annan's riveting account of this pivotal period of European history is both fascinating in itself and of considerable importance to our understanding of Europe today.
https://www.amazon.com/Changing-Enemies-Defeat-Regeneration-Germany/dp/0002556294
1995
administrator military author academic
Noel Gilroy Annan was born on December 25, 1916, in London, United Kingdom. He was a son of James Gilroy Annan and Fannie Quinn.
Noel studied at St. Winnifred's School, in Seaford, East Sussex, and Stowe School. In 1967, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.
At the beginning of his career, Noel served as Head of Temple House at Stowe School and edited the school newspaper "The Stoic". In 1935, he moved to King's College, Cambridge, where he read History and Law. During his tenure at King's College, Annan was also accepted into the Cambridge Apostles, a secret debating society. The society's members also included Guy Burgess and Michael Straight, who would later become the Soviet Union's spies.
In October 1940, Annan enrolled in the officer cadet training. In January 1941, he began serving in the Intelligence Corps and was sent to British Military Intelligence, Section 14 or MI14. While serving in this department of the War Office, Noel studied the movement of German forces by rail. Later, in 1942, Noel was sent to the Joint Intelligence Staff in the War Cabinet Office. Two years later, in 1944, he left for Paris, where he was made the French liaison officer with British military intelligence. Later, Annan was given the title of a senior officer in the political division of the British Control Commission in Germany.
In 1946, after serving in British Intelligence during World War II, Annan joined Cambridge University as a fellow. In 1956, he was named Provost of King's College, Cambridge, a post he held till 1966, when he was made Provost of University College London, remaining in that office until 1978, when he was named Vice-Chancellor of the University of London. In 1981, Annan left the post.
Annan’s first book, and perhaps the one, for which he was best known, is "Leslie Stephen: His Thought and Character in Relation to His Time". His other books include "The Curious Strength of Positivism in English Political Thought", "Roxburgh of Stowe: The Life of J. F. Roxburgh and His Influence in the Public Schools", "Our Age: English Intellectuals between the World Wars - A Group Portrait" and others. One of his last books, "Changing Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany", told of his intelligence work during World War II.
In addition, Annan was Chair of the board for the National Portrait Gallery in 1978-1985 and a trustee of the British Museum between 1963 and 1980. Moreover, he served as Chair of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting. Also, Annan was the first chairman of the Trustee's education committee at Churchill College, Cambridge.
(In January 1941, Noel Annan was assigned to Military Inte...)
1995Noel was a member of the House of Lords. He was made a life peer on July 16, 1965, as Baron Annan, of the Royal Burgh of Annan in the County of Dumfries.
In 1958, Annan was one of those, who signed a famous letter, published in The Times, which was instrumental in the establishment of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, campaigning for homosexual law reform.
Quotations: "Academic staff rather enjoy coming to conclusions, but they don't like coming to decisions at all."
Noel was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, an intellectual society at the University of Cambridge.
Noel Annan lived life to the full. He played tennis until he was quite elderly. When preparing his report on the future of broadcasting, he would rise very early and go for a swim in Hampstead. He was alert to the intellectual scene, as he showed with the panoramic display of his generation in his remarkable book "Our Age: Portrait of a Generation" (1990).
Noel married Gabriele (Ullstein) Annan, a German-born British author and literary and film critic, in 1950. Their marriage produced two daughters Lucy and Juliet.