Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Martin Alexander Lindsay, 1st Baronet of Dowhill, CBE, DSO (22 August 1905 – 5 May 1981) was a British Army officer, polar explorer, politician and author.

Martin Lindsay was himself the son of an officer in Britain's Indian Army who became a lieutenant colonel in the 2nd King Edward VII's Own Gurkha Rifles.

[2] At the end of his two years in Nigeria in 1929, Lindsay undertook his first expedition, travelling from West to East Africa through the Ituri Rainforest in what was then called the Belgian Congo.

Expedition members included John Rymill and Freddie Spencer Chapman but, as a seasoned Army officer, Lindsay brought a disciplined organisational and administrative experience to the team.

The expedition was sponsored by several British government ministries and aimed to explore and map a 350-mile long stretch of Greenland which had not previously been visited but contained the highest mountains[which?]

His fame extended beyond Britain and in April 1935 he was awarded the Alexandre de la Roquette Gold Medal by the French Geographical Society for his leadership.

Lindsay wrote to The Times in April 1939 to support the introduction of conscription, based on his knowledge of the people of Brigg, stating that "so widespread is the determination of the British working man to 'Stop Hitler' that I do not believe there would be any opposition of importance".

[6] Lindsay returned to soldiering 1939, on the outbreak of the Second World War and served in a staff appointment during the Norwegian campaign.

In the spring of 1940 Britain decided to send troops to Northern Norway and Lindsay, with his experience of organising Polar expeditions, was an obvious choice to help advise on the particular problems the climate and terrain could bring to military operations.

However he became deeply critical of the poorly organised and ill-prepared operation in Norway to the extent that he feared that Britain would lose the war unless important lessons were learned following the debacle.

[7] Lindsay was one of the first soldiers to reach London following the evacuation from Norway, and presented his candid account of the operation to members of His Majesty's Opposition such as Clement Attlee and Herbert Morrison.

He commanded the battalion in sixteen operations between July 1944 and May 1945, being again Mentioned in Despatches, wounded in action, and receiving the Distinguished Service Order.

Lindsay supported giving details of the atomic bomb to the latter "if she would agree to cooperate and take part in a mutual system of controls and inspections".

[17] Outside Parliament, Lindsay also contributed his journalistic skill, writing the text for a book about the House of Commons published in the "Britain in Pictures" series in 1947.

During the 1950 general election, Lindsay made a speech at Wellington, Shropshire in which he prophesied that Aneurin Bevan would soon take over as prime minister after Clement Attlee retired.

[20] Early in 1951 he called on Belgium not to put General von Falkenhausen, the former German military governor, on trial for war crimes.

[23] Lindsay also supported a committee such as that run by Eric Geddes in 1920 to cut public expenditure, criticising "the Government's hitherto total failure to fulfil their election promises" to make a substantial economy.

Writing in his constituency association's magazine in June 1954, he stated that Winston Churchill would retire before that autumn to make way for Anthony Eden and predicted that Harold Macmillan would be promoted to be the new Foreign Secretary.

[26] When Sydney Silverman proposed the abolition of capital punishment in 1956, Lindsay put down an amendment to retain it only for the murder of a police officer.

At the end of January 1958 the House of Commons set up a Select Committee on the issue, with Lindsay criticising the continued denigration of Parliament by newspapers who were also damaging the royal family.

[38] He supported the Macmillan government's application to join the Common Market, commenting that it was difficult to find a banker or industrialist who did not think membership was essential.