General Sir Cecil Frederick Nevil Macready, 1st Baronet, GCMG, KCB, PC (Ire) (7 May 1862 – 9 January 1946), known affectionately as Make-Ready (close to the correct pronunciation of his name), was a British Army officer. He served in senior staff appointments in the First World War and was the last British military commander in Ireland, and also served for two years as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis in London.

Macready was the son of the prominent actor William Charles Macready. His father was 69 years old at Nevil's birth. His paternal grandfather was William Macready the Elder (1755–1829), a famous Irish actor from Dublin. He was born in Cheltenham in May 1862 and was brought up in the bohemian circles frequented by his parents (his mother, Cecile, was the granddaughter of the painter, Sir William Beechey), and was educated at Marlborough College (for two years, before falling ill) and Cheltenham College. He later claimed that he was far too lazy to pursue an artistic career himself, and although he expressed an interest in a stage career, his father, who loathed his own profession, expressly forbade it (although he continued to be involved in amateur dramatics all his life and was also a talented singer). He therefore joined the British Army, passing out from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and being commissioned as a lieutenant into the Gordon Highlanders in October 1881.

He joined the 1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders at Malta, and in 1882 went with them to Egypt, fighting at the Battle of Tel el-Kebir, the last battle in which the British Army fought in red coats. He stayed in Egypt, and in 1884 was appointed garrison adjutant and staff lieutenant of military police at Alexandria. In 1886, he married Sophia Geraldine Atkin (died 1931), an Irishwoman; they had two daughters and a son. Macready remained in Alexandria until early 1889, when he returned to England to rejoin his regiment, and then served in Ceylon and India. Having been promoted to lieutenant in October 1889, he was promoted to captain in 1891. He was transferred to Dublin in 1892, and in 1894 became adjutant of the regiment's 2nd Volunteer Battalion in Aberdeenshire. In December 1899, he was promoted major and returned to India to join the 2nd Battalion, which was sent to South Africa in September.

Macready saw active service in the Second Boer War, serving in the besieged garrison at Ladysmith from October 1899 to February 1900. As a captain, returning from bringing in wounded, he first met Major-General John French on the battlefield of Elandslaagte, giving him a cup of coffee which he had looted from the Boers. He was mentioned in dispatches twice and promoted to the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel in November 1900, and in June 1901 headed a commission investigating cattle-raiding in Zululand. He stayed in South Africa in a series of staff posts, including assistant provost marshal at Port Elizabeth (1901), deputy assistant adjutant-general (DAAG) of the district west of Johannesburg (December 1901–1902), assistant adjutant general (AAG) and chief staff officer of Cape Colony (1903–1905), and assistant quartermaster-general (AQMG) of Cape Colony (1905–1906). He was promoted to colonel in November 1903. He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1906 Birthday Honours and returned to Britain in October of that year. He was then placed on a period of half-pay.

In March 1907, Macready was appointed an assistant adjutant-general in the directorate of personal services at the War Office in London, taking over from Colonel Colin Mackenzie, and helped to form the Territorial Force (TF). He was then promoted to temporary brigadier general in August 1909 and succeeded Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baron Rawlinson in command of the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot. In June 1910 he returned to the War Office as director of personal services, responsible for a variety of personnel matters. Also having responsibility for military aid to the civil power, he played a large part in a series of labour disputes and in deploying troops to Ireland in anticipation of disturbances there. Unusually for an army officer of the time, he had marked liberal tendencies, believed in the right to strike, and supported Irish home rule. He was contemptuous of politics, socialism, communism, pacifism and capitalism (unless the employers treated their employees very well).

He was promoted major-general in October, and in November he took direct command of troops deployed to deal with a possible miners' strike, in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, insisting that his troops remained subordinate both to the police and to the Home Office and not answerable to the panicking local magistrates. This policy probably helped to avert serious unrest in 1910 and again in a similar situation in 1912. A civil CB was added to his military CB in 1911 and, in June 1912 he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB). After the Curragh incident in Ireland in March 1914, Macready was made general officer commanding (GOC) Belfast District and was nominated as military governor-designate of Belfast in the event of civil war breaking out, something averted by the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.

On the outbreak of war in August 1914, Macready was immediately sent to France as Adjutant-General of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). He was promoted to temporary lieutenant-general on 13 September. In 1915, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG). In February 1916, having carried out this job efficiently, he was recalled to London as Adjutant-General to the Forces, one of the most senior staff appointments in the British Army.

In December 1915, Macready was warned by Special Branch of the impending violence and Irish nationalist volunteer recruitment in Ireland, and from March 1916 was receiving warnings from daily police reports. At the War Office, civil servants as late as 10 April 1916, still believed there was no cause for concern in Ireland: