Alfred Stirling

Alfred Thorp Stirling (8 September 1902 – 3 July 1981) was an Australian diplomat.

Stirling was the eldest of three children of Australian surgeon Robert Andrew Stirling and his second wife Isabella Jessie Matilda Oades-Thorp, a nurse from England. He graduated from the University of Melbourne (BA, 1922; MA, LL.B, 1924) where he excelled in French and won a W. T. Mollison scholarship for studying at University College, Oxford. He received his bachelor's degree there in 1927 and then worked as assistant to Robert Menzies in Melbourne. The two eventually became lifelong friends, and when Menzies became attorney-general he appointed Stirling as his secretary (1934–36).