Oliver Shewell Franks, Baron Franks, (16 February 1905 – 15 October 1992), was an English civil servant and philosopher who has been described as 'one of the founders of the postwar world'.
Franks was involved in Britain's recovery after the Second World War. Knighted in 1946, he was the British Ambassador to the United States of America from 1948 to 1952, during which time he strengthened the relationship between the two countries. He was awarded a life peerage on 10 May 1962, the year in which he became Provost of Worcester College, Oxford.
Lord Franks was often called upon by the government of the day to chair important inquiries, and he is best known for his report in the aftermath of the Falklands War which ultimately exonerated the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government from charges of having failed to heed warning signals of an Argentine invasion.
Early life
Franks was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Queen's College, Oxford. He became an Oxford academic, and Provost of Worcester College. He was a moral philosopher by training, serving as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow between 1936 and 1946.
Oliver Shewell Franks married Barbara Tanner on 3 July 1931 at a Quaker meeting in Redland, Bristol. They had two daughters and she died in 1987.
World War II
At the beginning of the war he was employed by the Ministry of Supply, where he rose to become Permanent Secretary by 1945. During the war he achieved fame by replacing the supplies after Dunkirk, and also replaced supplies from losses in the Battle of the Atlantic. After the war he became Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Supply, and was involved in a lecture entitled Central Planning and Control in War and Peace.
When he returned to England from Washington he took up the post of Chairman of Lloyds Bank which he held only from 1954 to 1962, although he remained a director until 1975. Between 1960 and 1962 he was also chairman of Friends Provident. From 1962 to 1976 he was Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. Between 1965 and 1984 he was the Chancellor of the University of East Anglia.
Aged 77, in 1982 he conducted an enquiry into the events leading to the Falklands War. He was chairman of the Board of Governors, of the United Oxford Hospitals, and of the Wellcome Trust, and of the Committee on Ministerial Affairs, of the Honours Scrutiny Committee, the President Kennedy Memorial Committee, the Rhodes Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation. Franks died aged 87.
- Privy Counsellor, 1949.
- International Member of the American Philosophical Society, 1949.
- Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George, 1952.
- Life peerage, as Baron Franks, of Headington in the County of Oxford, 10 May 1962.
- Order of Merit, 1977.
- Deputy Lieutenant for Oxfordshire, 1978.