His paternal grandfather was Admiral Edward Stanley Adeane, from a family of landed gentry tracing their ancestry to a Simon Adeane who died in 1686;[1] his maternal grandfather was Arthur Bigge, 1st Baron Stamfordham, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria and King George V. Adeane was educated at Eton College and graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1934 with a Master of Arts degree.

Adeane then returned to Britain and became George VI's Assistant Private Secretary from 1945 after five-and-a-half years on active military duty,[2] a post he held until the latter's death in 1952.

He continued in that post for Queen Elizabeth until 1953 when he was promoted to Private Secretary and admitted to the Privy Council.

[4] The tiger-shooting role had fallen to him after the Queen had declined, the Duke of Edinburgh had been unable to shoot due to having his trigger finger in a splint, and the then Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home had missed twice.

[6] Their son, Edward Adeane, a barrister, was Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales from 1979 to 1984.