The Reverend Alexander Thomas Gordon was born in Glasgow in June 1908 and completed his education at Edinburgh and Oxford Universities, gaining several academic distinctions, among them the Pasha Armenian Scholarship at Jesus College, Oxford and the Vans Dunlop Scholarship (and a First Class Honours in Semitic languages) at Edinburgh. Commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in January 1942, with whom he served in North Africa, he was advanced to Lieutenant in October of the same year and to Temporary Major in March 1945. Late Oxford University Supplements show him to have been ordained.