Introduction
Gladys Mary Wilson, Lady Wilson of Rievaulx (née Baldwin; born 12 January 1916), is an English poet and the widow of former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. She is the only spouse of a British PM to become a centenarian.
Biography
She was born in Diss, Norfolk, the daughter of Reverend Daniel Baldwin, who was a Congregationalist minister. She attended boarding school at Milton Mount College near Crawley, leaving in 1932 to attend a secretarial course in Cumberland for two years. She was employed as a shorthand typist at Lever Brothers in Port Sunlight before marrying Harold Wilson on New Year's Day, 1940. She and Wilson had two sons, Robin (born 5 December 1943) and Giles (born 1948).
In 1970 her volume of poetry, Selected Poems, was published and in 1976 Wilson was one of three judges of the Man Booker Prize, the other judges being Walter Allen and Francis King. According to the Dictionary of National Biography entry for Harold Wilson, written by Roy Jenkins, Mary Wilson was not too happy with life as a "political" wife. It was this detachment which gave the Private Eye spoof Mrs Wilson's Diary, the supposed diary of Mary Wilson, written in the style of the BBC's daily radio serial Mrs Dale's Diary, a spurious look of authenticity.
Mary was widowed on 24 May 1995 when Harold died of colorectal cancer and Alzheimer's disease after 10 years of illness. They had been married for 55 years. As of 2007 she lived in Westminster, a short distance away from Downing Street. She also retains the couple's holiday home in the Isles of Scilly.
In 2013, she accepted her invitation to attend the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, at the age of 97. Reaching her 100th birthday on 12 January 2016, she is the oldest living spouse of a former British Prime Minister, the last to have been wife of a serving Prime Minister during more than one separate period, the longest lived Prime Minister's spouse on record, and the only centenarian.
Titles from birth
- Miss Mary Baldwin (1916–1940)
- Mrs Harold Wilson (1940–1976)
- Lady Wilson (1976–1983)
- The Right Honourable The Lady Wilson of Rievaulx (1983–)