He was the younger son of Cecil Palmer, 2nd Baron Palmer, by his American wife Marguerite McKinley, daughter of William McKinley Osborne, a United States Army general.
He was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford.
[1] He was commissioned into the Royal Artillery and by the end of the Second World War he was a lieutenant-colonel.
Colonel Palmer married, 6 May 1950, in Duns, Scottish Borders, Lorna Eveline Hope, daughter of Charles William Hugh Bailie, of Manderston, Berwickshire, by which marriage the Palmer family came into possession of Manderston.
At the time of his marriage he was resident at 'Fernhurst' at Pinkneys Green in Berkshire.