[1] Robert Cecil was born in Southbourne, a suburb of Bournemouth, Hampshire (now in Dorset) in southern England on 25 March 1913.
[1] He was seconded to Major General Sir Stewart Menzies, the wartime head of MI6, for two years during the war.
[1] According to Cecil's obituary in The Independent, from childhood he had a close personal relationship with Donald Maclean, and the two both studied at Cambridge and worked together in the Foreign Office.
[1] There was some speculation that this relationship "cost [Cecil] the promotion to the highest echelons of the diplomatic service which his talents merited.
From 1968 to 1994 he was chairman of the London-based Institute for Cultural Research (ICR),[a] founded by the writer, thinker and teacher in the Sufi mystical tradition, Idries Shah[1][4] (for whom Cecil wrote an obituary).