Michael Adeane, Baron Adeane

Who was Michael Adeane, Baron Adeane?

Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Edward Adeane, Baron Adeane GCB GCVO PC, was Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II during the first twenty years of her reign.

Adeane was a maternal grandson of Lord Stamfordham and was educated at Eton and graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1934 with a Master of Arts degree. He then travelled to Canada and was aide-de-camp to Lord Bessborough from 1934 to 1934 and then to his successor, Lord Tweedsmuir until 1936.

Adeane then returned to England and became George VI's Assistant Private Secretary from 1945 after five and a half years on active military duty, a post he held until the latter's death in 1952. He continued in that post for Queen Elizabeth until 1953 when he was promoted to Private Secretary and admitted to the Privy Council. In 1961 during a Royal visit to Nepal he was credited with a share a tiger kill with Sir Christopher Bonham-Carter in a royal tiger hunt. The tiger shooting role had fallen to him after the Queen had declined, the Duke of Edinburgh had been unable to shoot due to having his trigger finger in a splint and the then Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home had missed twice.

In 1959, Adeane received the Grand Decoration in Gold with Sash for Services to the Republic of Austria and in 1972, he was given a life peerage as Baron Adeane, of Stamfordham in the County of Northumberland.