Arundell Rea Leakey | |
---|---|
Born |
Nairobi, Kenya |
30 December 1915
Died | 6 October 1999 | (aged 83)
Allegiance | United Kingdom |
Service/branch | British Army |
Years of service | 1936–1966 |
Rank | Major General |
Unit | Royal Tank Corps |
Commands held |
GOC Malta and Libya Director-General of Fighting Vehicles 7th Armoured Brigade 5th Royal Tank Regiment |
Battles/wars | |
Awards |
Companion of the Order of the Bath Distinguished Service Order Military Cross & Bar War Cross (Czechoslovakia) |
Relations | Lieutenant General David Leakey (son) Nigel Leakey (brother) |
Major General Arundell Rea Leakey CB, DSO, MC & Bar (30 December 1915 – 6 October 1999) was an officer in the British Army. He served in the Royal Tank Regiment in the Second World War, in North Africa, Italy and France. He later served in Korea, in the Arab Legion, and commanded a brigade in the British Army of the Rhine in the 1960s. He served as Director-General of Fighting Vehicles and finally as the commander of British troops in Malta and Libya. He retired in 1966, and became Director of the Wolfson Foundation. An autobiography, Leakey's Luck, was published in 1999.
His father Gray Leakey and step-mother Mary were murdered by the Mau Mau in Keyna in 1954. His older brother Nigel Leakey was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross in the Second World War, and a cousin Joshua Leakey was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2015. One of his sons is Lieutenant General David Leakey.
Leakey was born in Nairobi, Kenya on 30 December 1915. His father, Arundell Gray Leakey, was the son of Reverend John Arundell Leakey, a clergyman in England. Leakey's father had served in a Volunteer Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in the early 1900s. Through his great-grandfather James Shirley Leakey (1824–1871), one of the eleven children of the portrait painter James Leakey, he is related to the missionary Henry Leakey, so to paleoanthropologists Louis Leakey and Richard Leakey.