British army officer who founded and led the elite British Special Air Service (SAS) regiment during World War II.

The son of a brigadier general, Stirling attended Trinity College, Cambridge, for a year; in 1939 he joined the Scots Guard Supplementary Reserve of Officers and the next year the commando Brigade of Guards in the Middle East. In Egypt he persuaded his superiors to let him form a unit to make quick raids against the enemy, using the vast desert as cover. He was promoted to the rank of major, and with 6 officers and 60 enlisted men he formed the SAS, which proved exceptionally successful: German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel lost hundreds of aircraft and scores of supply posts to SAS raids. Stirling was captured (1943) in Tunisia and escaped four times before he was transferred to Colditz Castle prison camp for the remainder of the war.

After the war, Stirling formed organizations to encourage racial integration in colonial Africa, to provide security services for foreign heads of state, and to finance television stations in developing nations. He established the Stirling Foundation to preserve endangered species of animals. He was knighted in 1990.