Alan Lennox-Boyd was born in 1904. Educated at Sherborne School and Christ Church, Oxford, he was President of the Oxford Union in 1926 and stood, unsuccessfully, as a Conservative candidate in the 1929 General Election. He was elected to Parliament in 1931 and remained the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire until 1960 when he was granted a peerage, adopting the title of Viscount Boyd of Merton. He was among the first of his generation to achieve ministerial office when in 1938 he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour. 1938 was also the year of his marriage to Lady Patricia Guinness, daughter of Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh. They had three children, the eldest of whom, Simon, became the second Viscount Boyd on his father's death in 1983.

Lennox-Boyd served briefly at the Ministries of Home Security and Food before leaving the Government in 1940 to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a Lieutenant commanding a motor torpedo boat on the East Coast and in the Dover Patrol. He returned to office in 1943 as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, a post he retained in the caretaker administration of 1945. Although a formal system of 'shadowing' had not yet been established on the Conservative benches in the period 1945-51, Lennox-Boyd paid particular concern to the subject of civil aviation while maintaining a close interest in colonial affairs.

With the return of a Conservative government in 1951, Lennox-Boyd was appointed Minister of State for Colonial Affairs. In 1952, with great reluctance, he moved from the Colonial Office and became Minister for Transport and Civil Aviation. With the retirement of Oliver Lyttleton in 1954 Lennox-Boyd was appointed to the job which he had always coveted, that of Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs. He retained the post until October 1959. Having been persuaded by Harold Macmillan to contest the 1959 General Election despite his wish to leave the Cabinet, he remained on the back benches only a few months before being elevated to the House of Lords.

His retirement was an extremely active one. He rejoined the board of Arthur Guinness, Son and Co. Ltd., having been a member from 1942-43 and 1945-51, and became managing director in 1961 and vice-chairman in 1967. He was also a director of ICI and Tate and Lyle and a leading member of business pressure groups such as the Brewers Society and the Institute of Directors. At the same time he kept up his interest in Conservative Party politics and Commonwealth affairs, becoming Joint President of the Monday Club shortly after its foundation in 1961 and taking an active role in the work of organisations such as the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Overseas Service Pensioners Association and Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). In addition, he was a member of the Board of the British Museum and he devoted much of his time to the numerous charities including Save the Children, Lepra and the Ranfurly Library Service. His last major political task was to lead a team of observers to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to observe the 1979 elections for the leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher. his group's findings, that the elections were free and fair, were not sufficient to persuade the in-coming Conservative government to recognise the administration of Bishop Muzowera.