Martin Gilliat

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Martin John Gilliat GCVO MBE (8 February 1913 – 27 May 1993) was a British soldier and courtier who served as Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother for 37 years. Gilliat was a German prisoner of war in the Second World War, and was imprisoned in Colditz Castle.

Gilliat was born in Hertfordshire, the son of local landowner Sir John Babington Gilliat and Muriel Grinnell-Milne. Gilliat's parents both came from banking families, his paternal grandfather was John Saunders Gilliat, Governor of the Bank of England from 1883 to 1885. Gilliat's childhood was divided between The Cedars in Chorleywood and Frogmore Hall, Hertfordshire, before moving to the Manor House in Welwyn. He attended Eton College and entered the King's Royal Rifle Corps in 1933 after graduating from the Royal Military College in Sandhurst.

Gilliat served with the Rifle Corps in Northern Ireland and Palestine prior to the outbreak of World War II, and was captured during the Battle of Dunkirk as part of the British Expeditionary Force. He made several attempts to escape, with one attempt lasting several days, but was transferred to the prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C (Colditz Castle) in 1940 where he remained until the end of the war. He was mentioned in dispatches and later rewarded with an MBE. After the war Gilliat served as Deputy Military Secretary to Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma during his brief term as the last Viceroy of India in 1947–48, and as Comptroller to Malcolm Macdonald, the High Commissioner for South-East Asia. In September 1947, while in Mountbatten's service, Gilliat and the author Alan Campbell-Johnson were driving through the Paharganj district of Delhi when they were fired upon. The driver of their car was killed in the incident, and Gilliat suffered a substantial loss of blood, and a superficial head wound.

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