John Wolfenden, Baron Wolfenden

He was created a life peer on 12 July 1974 with the title Baron Wolfenden, of Westcott in the County of Surrey.

Wolfenden was director of the British Museum from 1969 to 1973, became President of Chelsea College in 1972, Chairman of the Chelsea Building Society and Metropolitan Association of Building Societies in 1978.

In 1962, the Privy Council appointed Wolfenden as Chairman of the Council for the Training of Health Workers and the Council for the Training in Social Work, two bodies established by the Health Visiting and Social Work (Training) Act 1962.

In 1957, Wolfenden chaired an independent committee initiated by the Central Council of Physical Recreation which investigated the role of various statutory and voluntary groups in sport in the United Kingdom. The committee published its report in 1960, and fifty years later it was still an influential work in its field.

From 1954 to 1957 he was Chairman of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, known in shorthand as the Wolfenden Committee after himself, whose report was published in 1957. Wolfenden had been appointed to head the committee by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe to consider whether the existing laws on these should be changed - although the latter, as Lord Kilmuir, would come to oppose liberalisation of gay rights in the House of Lords. As Geraldine Bedell noted, this was ironic and she also commented: "Perhaps he [Maxwell-Fyfe] thought, by handing over to a committee, to shelve the issue. Perhaps he assumed Wolfenden would find against, in which case, he chose a curious chairman, because Wolfenden had a gay son, Jeremy."

In 1950 he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading and found time to write two books, Family Affair and The Steele Age, both part of the series of 'Take Home Books'.

Wolfenden was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1942, and was knighted in 1956.

John Wolfenden was the headmaster of Uppingham School (1934–1944) and Shrewsbury School (1944–1950) and chairman of various government committees which mostly focused on education and problems with youth.

Wolfenden married in 1932 Eileen, daughter of A.J. Spilsbury, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. His eldest son was Jeremy Wolfenden, a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and a British spy.

Having studied in Oxford, Wolfenden became a don at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1929.

John Frederick Wolfenden, Baron Wolfenden, CBE (26 June 1906, Swindon, Wiltshire – 18 January 1985, Guildford, Surrey) was a British educationalist probably best remembered for chairing the Wolfenden Committee whose report, recommending the decriminalisation of homosexuality, was published in 1957. He was headmaster of Uppingham and Shrewsbury public schools.