John Adair (author)
author, military historian and leadership theorist
John Eric Adair (18 May 1934 – 1 November 2025) was a British academic who was a leadership theorist and author of more than 40 books (translated into 18 languages) on business, military and other leadership.
Life and career
Adair was born in Luton and educated at St Paul's School before undertaking his national service as a second lieutenant in the Scots Guards from 1953 to 1955. Unusually, he served as adjutant of a Bedouin regiment in the Arab Legion and was briefly in command of the garrison of Jerusalem in the front line. He also studied at Hull Nautical College (where he qualified as an Arctic trawler deckhand in 1955) and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, obtaining his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959. He later obtained a doctorate from King's College London in 1966 and a BLitt degree from Jesus College, Oxford, in 1971. He became a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1966. After working as a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst from 1961 to 1967, he later worked for the Industrial Society before becoming professor of leadership studies at the University of Surrey in 1979, a post he held until 1984. He was a visiting professor at the University of Exeter from 1990 to 2000. He was a fellow of the Windsor Leadership Trust, where he regularly spoke on leadership development programmes. From 2006, he was honorary professor of leadership at the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3180864. VIAF identifies the subject as 19722692. The Library of Congress control number is n50037019. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2025, 1953 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Adair (author)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.