The Extraordinary Life of
Erroll Prior-Palmer
Soldier. Reformer. Industrial pioneer.
Erroll Prior-Palmer was one of the few men to reach the highest levels of both the British Army and British industry. A brilliant but unconventional leader, he combined battlefield command with a restless appetite for innovation that would later reshape global trade.
Born in 1903 and marked early by adversity, Erroll overcame severe dyslexia and a brutal schooling to pass out top at Sandhurst, uniquely winning both the Sword of Honour and the Saddle of Honour.
In war, he proved a formidable commander, leading from the front in Normandy and beyond. As a brigadier, he commanded the swimming tanks that landed on Sword Beach on D-Day, then took the 8th Armoured Brigade through every major battle to the end of the war in Europe.
Forced to leave the army after a near-fatal polo accident, Erroll began a second career that would eclipse even his military achievements. Recruited into a struggling shipping empire, he engineered a dramatic turnaround before leading one of the most significant industrial revolutions of the twentieth century: the shift to containerisation. As founding chief executive of Overseas Containers Limited, he drove the creation of the world’s first trans-oceanic container route, overcoming political resistance, industrial unrest and immense financial risk.
A man of contradictions, shaped by privilege, hardship and unrelenting drive, Erroll’s life spanned war, empire, and technological transformation.
This is the story of a leader who refused to accept limits, and in doing so helped change the modern world.
About Erroll Prior-Palmer
His father Erroll Prior-Palmer being one of the most remarkable Englishmen of the twentieth century, Simon Prior-Palmer felt compelled to tell the story after spending over thirty years in the City of London.
Erroll's story spans two worlds: the battlefield and the boardroom. He was the only man ever to pass out of Sandhurst with both the Sword of Honour and the Saddle of Honour. Mentioned in Despatches in France in 1940, he was appointed Commandant of Sandhurst mid-war to forge an officer class capable of matching the German professional army. As a Brigadier on D-Day, he commanded the assault on Sword Beach, directing the deep-sea launch of the swimming tanks that led the landings, before going on to lead the 8th Armoured Brigade through the remainder of the campaign in Northwest Europe.
After the war, recovering from a near-fatal polo accident in America, Erroll P-P reinvented himself entirely — spearheading the container revolution that transformed global trade, as the first Chief Executive of Overseas Containers Ltd, the consortium of Britain's four largest shipping companies including P&O. It was a second D-Day of a different kind.
About the Author, Simon Prior-Palmer
Simon Prior-Palmer read PPE at Christ Church, Oxford, and attended Eton College. He enjoyed a distinguished career in investment banking, latterly as head of the UK investment banking unit at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he and his colleague Stephen Hester — dubbed 'Castor and Pollux' by their rivals at S.G. Warburg — dominated European convertible bond issuance. He led the European component of the British government's privatisations of British Telecom, British Gas, and the water and electricity industries.
He has served as a Trustee of Macmillan Cancer Support, a Senior Adviser at the FSA, and as the sole external member of the group that wrote the FSA's Report on the Failure of RBS for Parliament. He was a Board Commissioner at Postcomm, regulating Royal Mail and the postal market.
His family connections to both military and public life run deep. His mother, Lady Doreen Hope, was the youngest daughter of the Marquess of Linlithgow, Viceroy of India from 1936 to 1943. His sister is the celebrated equestrian Lucinda Green MBE, six-times winner of Badminton, twice European Champion, World Champion, and Olympic silver medallist. His daughter Lara won the 1,000km Mongol Derby in 2013 — the first British person, first woman and youngest winner — later writing the bestselling Rough Magic, published by Penguin Random House.