William Darling (politician)

Sir William Young Darling, CBE, MC (8 May 1885 – 4 February 1962) was the Unionist Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons for the Edinburgh South constituency from 1945 to 1957. He was a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland 1942-57.

He was the second son of William Darling of Edinburgh. He was educated at James Gillespie’s School; Daniel Stewart’s College; Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh University. He had the degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD)

He was awarded the Military Cross during the First World War, with bar. He became a member of Edinburgh City Council in 1933 and was City Treasurer, 1937–40.

He was Lord Provost of Edinburgh, 1941–44; National Government Candidate for West Lothian, 1937; and Chairman, Scottish Council on Industry, 1942–46.

He was appointed CBE in 1923 and knighted in 1943.

He was the author of Private Papers of a Bankrupt Bookseller (1931); Hades the Ladies (1933); The Old Mill (1934); Down but not Out (1935); Bankrupt Bookseller Speaks Again (1938); Why I Believe in God and King’s Cross to Waverley (1944); A Book of Days (1951); So it Looks to Me (1952); and A Westminster Lad (Poems) (1955).

He was the great uncle of Alistair Darling^[1] who has been an Edinburgh MP since 1987, and held various ministerial and Cabinet posts in the Labour government from 1997 to 2010.

References

1. ↑ "Edinburgh South West". Scottish Politics. Retrieved 14 November 2006. 

• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs