Background
Born in Glasgow, Glen was the son of a Glasgow shipowner and educated at Fettes College and Balliol College, Oxford.
Born in Glasgow, Glen was the son of a Glasgow shipowner and educated at Fettes College and Balliol College, Oxford.
Fettes College, and Balliol College, Oxford.
He later invested in the shipping industry, pioneered package holidays, and became chairman of the British Tourist Authority. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1964 and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1967. He first travelled to the Arctic as crew on a fishing boat owned by a Cambridge law don, and spent two months surveying in the mountains.
The next year, he led his own a 16-man Oxford University summer expedition, in the winter spent some months with the Lapps of northern Sweden, then in the following summer, returned to Spitsbergen for a few weeks.
In 1935 the 23-year-old Glen led an Oxford University expedition which established a station on the ice cap of North East Land and carried out research in glaciology, geology and radio propagation in high latitudes, He wrote Under the Pole Star in 1937. In January 1940 Glen was posted to Belgrade as assistant naval attache at the British legation, but when in March, 1941 the 17-year-old Peter II of Yugoslavia participated in a British-supported coup d"état opposing the Tripartite Pact German retribution was swift, and Belgrade was bombed within three days.
The British legation left and made their way home via Albania, Italy, unoccupied France and Spain. He later served with distinction in dangerous clandestine operations in Yugoslavia in support of Josip Broz Tito.
And in Albania and Bulgaria.
He knew Ian Fleming and is often given as one of the inspirations for James Bond. He joined a syndicate to buy shipbrokers H Clarkson & Company, a subsidiary of which later became a pioneer of package holidays - Clarksons Holidays. The holiday division was sold in 1972 to Court Lincolnshire, a shipping company and charter airline, which collapsed in August 1974.
Glen was a director of British European Airways and chairman of the British Tourist Authority from 1969 to 1977.
10 February 1942 - The Polar Medal (Silver) - Lieutenant Alexander Richard Glen, Bachelor of Arts, R.N.V.R. for good services with the Oxford University Arctic Expedition to North East Land in 1935 and 1936.
Council Royal Geographical Society 1945-1947, 1954-1957, 1961-1962. Council, Mount Everest Foundation 1955-1957. Historic buildings Council for England 1976-1980, Horse-race Totalisator Board 1976-1984, Advisory Council, Victoria and Albert Museum since 1976.
Married Baroness Zora de Collaert in 1947.