 In civilian life he entered the world of commercial shipping and was successively a director of the Union-Castle Line, manager of Cayzer Irvine, and managing director of Overseas Containers Limited, before retiring in 1969.The son of Prior Spunner Prior-Palmer, of County Sligo and 32 Merrion Square, Dublin, and Anne Leslie Gason, of Kilteelagh, County Tipperary, Prior-Palmer was educated in England at Wellington College and at the Royal Military College Sandhurst.From Sandhurst Prior-Palmer was commissioned in 1923 as a Second Lieutenant into the 9th Lancers in which his elder brother Otho Prior-Palmer (1897–1986) was already serving.