Edward Noel (Indian Army officer)
Lieutenant-Colonel Edward William Charles Noel was a British officer, diplomat and spy.
The grandson of Charles Noel, 2nd Earl of Gainsborough his father was the Earl's second son. He was the elder brother of Captain Noel an English mountaineer and filmmaker best known for his film of the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition alongside George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. He was educated at The Oratory School, Birmingham and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Commissioned initially in the Royal Garrison Artillery, he transferred to the Indian Army in 1908.
He cycled from England to India twice, in 1909 and 1910.
In 1915, he was appointed Vice-Consul to Ahwaz in Persia and Consul for Kerman and Persian Baluchistan in 1929. While carrying despatches for Dunsterforce, Noel was held hostage by the Jangalis in 1919. He became a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in the 1918 New Year Honours and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1919. In the aftermath of the World War I, he supported a creation of an independent Kurdistan and made extensive excursions through the region and had established good relations with descendants of Bedir Khan Beg and Sheikh Ubeydullah.
