Martin Maddan
British politician (1920-1973)

William Francis Martin Maddan (4 October 1920 – 22 August 1973) was a British businessman and Conservative Party politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hitchin from 1955 until 1964, and for Hove from 1965 until his death.
Background
Maddan was born in 1920 in Stockport, and was educated at Fettes College and Brasenose College, Oxford. He was in the Royal Marines from 1939 to 1946, where he attained the rank of major.
Maddan was a businessman who worked in market research with a focus on television. He worked for Television Audience Management and the Market Research Society in the 1950s. In 1962, he co-founded AGB [Audits of Great Britain] Research Ltd, and became its chairman.
Political career
Maddan was a member of the London Municipal Society from 1949 to 1950. He was the Conservative candidate at Battersea in 1950, but lost the election. He became MP for Hitchin in 1955, and served until his defeat by Shirley Williams of the Labour Party in 1964.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Martin Maddan” is british politician (1920-1973). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Martin, Maddan and British, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6776111. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1973, 1955 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Martin Maddan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.