Horace Maybray Maybray-King, Baron Maybray-King, (; 25 May 1901 – 3 September 1986), was a British politician who served as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1950 until 1971 before becoming a life peer. For most of his time in Parliament, he sat as a Labour MP. Following the death of Harry Hylton-Foster in September 1965, King, who had served as deputy speaker for ten months, became the Speaker of the House of Commons. As was customary, he renounced his party allegiance upon taking up the post. He was the first person from the Labour Party to hold the post.
Early life
Horace King was born in Grangetown near Middlesbrough. His father John William King was an insurance salesman and Methodist local preacher. He was educated at Stockton Secondary School, Stockton-on-Tees, from 1912 to 1917 and never lost touch with these local roots. Horace attended King's College London and graduated with a first-class bachelor's degree in English. The recording changes the phrase "the Hampshire planes" to "the British planes". He and a teacher colleague were the first to translate "Lili Marlene" but were too slow to get their version to the song-publishing market. He left Taunton's in 1947 to become headteacher of Regent's Park Secondary School.
In July 1966 King attended the opening of the new Knesset building in Jerusalem, the home of the Israeli legislature. King was asked by the Israeli government to bring the basic records of the British constitution and he bought reproductions of the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Rights and the Bill of Rights. During the parliamentary recess in 1966 King lectured in Athens and Venice on the British parliament and democracy also attended events in Bonn and the Middle East.
After the Commons
After leaving the Commons, he was created a life peer as Baron Maybray-King, of the City of Southampton, on 2 March 1971, having legally changed his surname to Maybray-King on 4 February. He took Maybray from his own middle name, which was his mother Margaret's maiden name. Maybray-King served as a deputy speaker in the House of Lords. He was awarded an honorary degree (Doctor of Laws) by the University of Bath in 1969. In 1977 he celebrated the opening of the Itchen Bridge by being driven across it in a horse-dawn landau.
He is commemorated by his name having been given to an arched passageway leading to the site of the former primary school, off the High Street in the village of Norton-on-Tees, County Durham, in which he lived as a child and in the naming of the A3024 Maybray King Way in Southampton.
He was an active fraternalist with the Loyal Order of Moose in Great Britain. He was created an honorary Grand Governor in 1972 and served as Grand Governor from 1976 to 1977.
Personal life
He was married four times. His first wife, Victoria, died in 1966 after almost 42 years of marriage. He was then married to Una Porter from 1967 until her death in 1978; to Ivy Duncan Foster from 1978 until divorcing in 1981; and to Sheila Atkinson, from March 1986 until his death on 3 September of that year, at the Royal Hampshire Hospital in Southampton.
An unpublished biography/autobiography (A Boy Called Horace) is in the Parliamentary Archives.