Richard Dannatt

General Francis Richard Dannatt, Baron Dannatt, (born 23 December 1950) is a retired senior British Army officer and member of the House of Lords.

Dannatt was commissioned into the Green Howards in 1971, and his first tour of duty was in Belfast as a platoon commander.

During his second tour of operations, also in Northern Ireland, Dannatt was awarded the Military Cross.

He entered the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in September 1969 and was commissioned into the Green Howards as a second lieutenant on 30 July 1971.

After a short period of leave, he was sent to Belfast, Northern Ireland, as a platoon commander.

Upon completion of the tour, Dannatt returned to Great Britain to take a platoon commanders' course, after which he rejoined the Green Howards at their barracks in West Germany.

He and his platoon returned to Belfast in late 1972.

For gallantry on an operation in which his platoon came under fire in East Belfast on 7 February 1972, he was later awarded the Military Cross.

Following a major stroke in 1977, Dannatt considered leaving the army, but was encouraged by his commanding officer to stay.

He had an elder sister who died from breast cancer in 1988.

Dannatt was heavily influenced by his paternal great-grandfather, a Victorian farmer and devout Christian who devised a drainage system.

Dannatt and his sister were sent to separate boarding schools.

He attended Felsted Junior School, where he gained an ambition to become a professional cricketer.

For his secondary education, he was sent to St. Lawrence College in Ramsgate, Kent, where he joined the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) and eventually rose to senior under-officer.

While at school, he developed a dislike of his first name, Francis, after it was mistaken for a girl's and he was invited to a birthday party at which he was the only boy.

He eventually switched to his middle name, Richard, when he was fifteen.

By then aspiring to become a barrister, Dannatt applied to study law at Emmanuel College, Cambridge but was turned down after an interview, at which point his ambition switched towards a military career.

Having initially been interested in a tank regiment, Dannatt was interviewed at the Regular Commissions Board (later renamed the Army Officer Selection Board) by an officer from the Green Howards, who persuaded him to consider the infantry and arranged for a visit to a barracks near Colchester.

There he met Peter Inge, then a major, and Dannatt became set on joining the Green Howards.

After Staff College, he became a company commander and eventually assumed command of the Green Howards in 1989.

He attended and then commanded the Higher Command and Staff Course, after which he was promoted to brigadier.

Dannatt was given command of the 4th Armoured Brigade in 1994 and commanded the British component of the Implementation Force the following year.

Dannatt took command of the 3rd Mechanised Division in 1999 and simultaneously commanded British forces in Kosovo.

After a brief tour in Bosnia, he was appointed Assistant Chief of the General Staff.

Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, he became involved in planning for subsequent operations in the Middle East.

As Commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), a role he assumed in 2003, Dannatt led the ARRC headquarters in planning for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ARRC served in Afghanistan in 2005, but by this time Dannatt was Commander-in-Chief, Land Command—the day-to-day commander of the British Army.

He was responsible for implementing a controversial reorganisation of the infantry, which eventually resulted in his regiment, the Green Howards, being amalgamated into the Yorkshire Regiment.

He was Chief of the General Staff (head of the British Army) from 2006 to 2009.

Dannatt was appointed Chief of the General Staff (CGS) in August 2006, succeeding General Sir Mike Jackson.

Dannatt faced controversy over his outspokenness, in particular his calls for improved pay and conditions for soldiers and for a drawdown of operations in Iraq in order to better man those in Afghanistan.

He also set about trying to increase his public profile, worried that he was not recognisable enough at a time when he had to defend the army's reputation against alleged prisoner abuse in Iraq.

He later assisted with the formation of Help for Heroes to fund a swimming pool at Headley Court and, later in his tenure, brokered an agreement with the British press that allowed Prince Harry to serve in Afghanistan.

He was succeeded as CGS by Sir David Richards and retired in 2009, taking up the largely honorary post of Constable of the Tower of London, which he held until July 2016.

Between November 2009 and the British general election in May 2010, Dannatt served as a defence adviser to Conservative Party leader David Cameron.

Dannatt resigned when Cameron's party formed a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats after the election produced a hung parliament, arguing that the prime minister should rely primarily on the advice of the incumbent service chiefs.

Dannatt published an autobiography in 2010 and continues to be involved with a number of charities and organisations related to the armed forces.

He is married with four children, one of whom served as an officer in the Grenadier Guards.

Dannatt, the son of Anthony and Mary (née Chilvers), was born at home in Broomfield—now a suburb of Chelmsford—in Essex.

His father and grandfather were architects, working from a practice in Chelmsford, and his mother was a part-time teacher at the London Bible College.