He says that it was his National Service that finally convinced him to use his legal training, by showing him a side of the law which he could never aspire to in civvy street.
He was a captain in the directorate of army legal services and for 18 months acted as a prosecuting attorney handling everything from fraud, assault and attempted murder to what he has described, with great delicacy, as "various unnatural offences".
After that kind of drama he said there was no way he could face the tedium of a provincial solicitor's office where wills and small debt summonses would be the highlights of life.
He was instrumental in implementing a major streamlining of ICI to help it ride out the recession and face up to the tough competition of the 1990s, including a severe belt tightening and decentralised organisation with a lot of authority delegated to the chief executives who ran the individual businesses.
[4][5] On 15 May 1991, Hanson disclosed that it had purchased about 20 million, or 2.8 percent, of ICI's shares, leading to speculation of a possible takeover of what was at the time the UK's third-largest company.
He said "the demerger will produce two powerful, focused new companies able to concentrate even more on strengthening their leading positions in world markets".