Horace Maybray Maybray-King, Baron Maybray-King, PC (né 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.^[1] He was the first person from the Labour Party to hold the post.

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Quick Facts The Right HonourableThe Lord Maybray-KingPC, Speaker of the House of Commonsof the United Kingdom ...

The Right Honourable The Lord Maybray-King PC
King in 1966
Speaker of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom
In office 26 October 1965 – 12 January 1971
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Prime Minister	Harold Wilson Edward Heath
Preceded by	Harry Hylton-Foster
Succeeded by	Selwyn Lloyd
Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons Chairman of Ways and Means
In office 3 November 1964 – 26 October 1965
Speaker	Harry Hylton-Foster
Preceded by	William Anstruther-Gray
Succeeded by	Samuel Storey
Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal
In office 2 March 1971 – 3 September 1986 Life Peerage
Member of Parliament for Southampton Itchen
In office 26 May 1955 – 11 January 1971
Preceded by	Ralph Morley
Succeeded by	Bob Mitchell
Member of Parliament for Southampton Test
In office 23 February 1950 – 6 May 1955
Preceded by	Constituency created
Succeeded by	John Howard
Personal details
Born	Horace Maybray King 25 May 1901 Grangetown, England
Died	3 September 1986(1986-09-03) (aged 85) Southampton, England
Political party	Labour
Spouses	Victoria Harris ​ ​ (m. 1924; died 1966)​ Una Porter ​ ​ (m. 1967; died 1978)​ Ivy Duncan Foster ​ ​ (m. 1978; div. 1981)​ Sheila Atkinson ​ (m. 1986)​
Children	1
Alma mater	King's College London
Profession	Teacher

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Horace King was born in Grangetown near Middlesbrough.^[2] 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.^[2]

Upon graduating in 1922, King worked as a teacher at Taunton's School in Southampton.^[2] He became head of the English department in 1927. While working as a teacher, King studied part-time for his Ph.D. His thesis was on the Folios of Shakespeare. He received his doctorate from King's College London in 1940.^[2] He had been excused from military service during World War II due to a duodenal ulcer. He and his family—first wife Victoria Florence (née Harris), whom he married in 1924,^[2] and daughter Margaret—and Taunton's school were evacuated to Bournemouth from Southampton in 1940. Among the many pupils was 15-year-old Benny Hill. King was always a keen musician, playing the piano, piano-accordion and organ. During the Second World War he formed various concert parties—"The V Concert Party" was one—which toured the smaller outlying military bases and entertained troops not often reached by ENSA.

He also raised funds by organising concerts to "buy" Spitfires and send aid to Russia. He is believed to have instigated fund raising in Hampshire by letters he wrote to the Hampshire Chronicle in July and August 1940. "The Spitfire Song" - for which he wrote both words and music (originally titled "The Hampshire Spitfire Song") - was recorded by Joe Loss and his Orchestra.^[3] 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.^[2]

Having long been involved with left-wing politics, King first stood as a Labour party candidate in the 1945 general election. Labour won with a massive landslide, but King was unsuccessful in his attempt to take the ultra-safe Conservative seat of New Forest and Christchurch.^[2] The following year he was elected to Hampshire County Council, on which he served until 1965 with only a single three-year break.^[2] His wife, Victoria Florence King, was also politically active - a town councillor and Mayor of Southampton in coronation year, 1953. She died in 1966 and received a posthumous OBE.^[2]

After leaving the Commons, he was created a life peer as Baron Maybray-King, of the City of Southampton, on 2 March 1971,^[6] having legally changed his surname to Maybray-King on 4 February.^[7] 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.^[8] In 1977 he celebrated the opening of the Itchen Bridge by being driven across it in a horse-dawn landau.^[9]

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.

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.^[2][10]

An unpublished biography/autobiography (A Boy Called Horace) is in the Parliamentary Archives.