Alan Raymond Mais, Baron Mais, GBE, TD, ERD, JP (7 July 1911-28 November 1993[1]) was a British peer and former Lord Mayor of the City of London between 1972 and 1973.
He was born in Southampton, the only child of Captain Ernest Mais, a master mariner and educated at Banister Court School, Hampshire, and later at the College of Estate Management, a part of London University, where he trained as a surveyor. He worked for engineers Richard Costain and Parker Construction before setting up his own cosulting practice.
During World War II he was a major with special forces in France, Iran and Iraq. After returning to Britain late in 1943, he became involved in the Mulberry harbour project for the D-Day landings. Two artificial harbours were constructed on the Normandy coast: a British one at Arromanches and an American one a few miles to the west. When construction began immediately after D-day (6 June 1944) Mais, by now a lieutenant-colonel, was in charge of constructing the pierheads and floating roadways at the British harbour under Colonel S. K. Gilbert of the Royal Engineers, who commanded the port construction force. He then joined the Canadians in the advance to the Rhine and, promoted full colonel, became deputy chief engineer in Antwerp.
After the war he joined contractors Trollope and Colls, becoming joint managing director and chairman in 1963 and retiring in 1968 when the firm was taken over by Trafalgar House.
He was made a life peer by Harold Wilson in 1967 and sat in the House of Lords on the Labour, Liberal and Liberal Democrats benches.
He became master of the Cutlers' Company and a freeman of the City of London and of the Paviors' Company. He was an alderman in the Walbrook ward from 1963, a sheriff of London in 1969, and Lord Mayor of London in 1972, the first peer to be elected to that office. He was a lieutenant of the City, a justice of the peace and from 1976 deputy lieutenant of the county of Kent.
In 1936 Mais married Lorna Aline, the daughter of Stanley Aspinall Boardman, a wool merchant of Addiscombe in Surrey, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.
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