He served for two years in the British South Africa Police in Southern Rhodesia and then in the Southern Rhodesian Civil Service until the end of the Second World War, when he returned to Britain to assume his title and became a director of companies, and a Special Constable with the City of London Police.

He was born in England, the son of Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Baden-Powell and Olave St. Clair Soames.

Marriage was forbidden by the BSAP terms of service, so he transferred to the Southern Rhodesia Native Affairs Department in 1937.

They had two sons and two daughters: His father died in 1941, so he inherited the peerage, and in 1945 he left the Southern Rhodesia Government and returned to England for eighteen months, and then permanently in 1949.

[4] He was: In May 1952 he visited Poole, Dorset and opened the new hall of the 1st Hamworthy Scouts' who had been started by some boys from his father's 1907 Brownsea Island experimental camp.