Dates

• Existence: 1881 - 1968

Biography

Alan Noel Barlow was born in London on 25 December 1881, the eldest of the five children of Sir Thomas Barlow (1845–1945), who was created baronet in 1901, physician to the royal family, and his wife, Ada Helen (1843–1928), daughter of Patrick Dalmahoy, writer to the signet, of Edinburgh. He was educated at Marlborough College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, of which he was a scholar and later an honorary fellow, and took a first in literae humaniores in 1904. In 1906 Barlow was appointed to a clerkship in the House of Commons but a year later Sir Robert Morant selected him as a junior examiner in the Board of Education. Here he rose to be private secretary to the parliamentary secretary in 1914, but not before he had married, on 6 April 1911, Emma Nora (1885-1989), the daughter of Sir Horace Darwin; they had six children. In 1915 Barlow was transferred to the Ministry of Munitions as private secretary to Christopher Addison in his capacity first of parliamentary secretary and then of minister. In 1917 Barlow was promoted to deputy controller of labour supply and a year later to controller of the labour department. He became well versed in the problems of industrial relations, and so after the war it was natural that he should join the newly founded and much overstretched Ministry of Labour, where he was initially responsible for demobilization and training before securing in 1924 a major promotion to principal assistant secretary in charge of the industrial relations department. After 1929 Barlow's main responsibility reverted to training where he established a core of efficient and well-respected government training centres which could be, and were, rapidly expanded in war. In 1933 Barlow was selected to be principal private secretary to the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald. The appointment was not a success and in 1934 Barlow was transferred to the Treasury, as under-secretary in charge of the supply divisions and thus public expenditure, a responsibility he retained when promoted to third secretary in 1939 and second secretary in 1942. During the war he also assumed responsibility for, and thereby became a member of an interlocking range of committees concerned with, the machinery of government. Barlow retired from the Treasury in 1948. He was appointed CBE (1918), CB (1928), KBE (1938), KCB (1942), GCB (1947), and succeeded his father as second baronet in 1945. In his home county of Buckinghamshire, as well as being a keen gardener, Barlow farmed several hundred acres near Wendover; and it was at his farm, Boswells, that he died on 28 February 1968.

Found in 10 Collections and/or Records: