Michael Nolan, Baron Nolan

Michael Patrick Nolan, Baron Nolan, PC, DL, KCSG (10 September 1928 – 22 January 2007) was a judge in the United Kingdom, and the first chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life 1994 to 1997. In the words of his obituary in The Guardian, "Lord Nolan .. made a profound mark on national life by substantially cleansing the Augean stable of corrupt politics as founding chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life."

Nolan was the son of James Nolan, a solicitor, and his wife, Jane Nolan. His father's family had left County Kerry in the mid-19th century. Lord Nolan cited his parents as "the first and foremost influences on my life". The Nolan family lived in Bexhill-on-Sea. He and his elder brother, James "Jim" Nolan (died 2001) and his nephews, James, Rossa and Luke, all attended Ampleforth College.

After two years of national service in the Royal Artillery, from 1947 to 1949, he read law at Wadham College, Oxford, where he was awarded an honorary fellowship in 1992. His contemporaries at Oxford included Patrick Mayhew and Stephen Tumim, both of whom became close friends.

He married Margaret Noyes, whom he met at Oxford, in 1953; she was the younger daughter of the poet Alfred Noyes. They had one son and four daughters. They kept a second home on the Côte d'Azur.

Nolan was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1953, and specialised in tax law. He became a Queen's Counsel (QC) in 1968, and was called to the Bar in Northern Ireland in 1974, becoming a QC in Northern Ireland at the same time. He was a member of the Bar Council in 1973 to 1974, and a member of the Senate of the Inns of Court from 1974 to 1980. He became a bencher at Middle Temple in 1975. He was a member of the Sandilands Committee on Inflation Accounting from 1973 to 1975.

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