Mary Wilson, Lady Wilson of Rievaulx
English peeress and poet (1916–2018)
Gladys Mary Wilson, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx (née Baldwin; 12 January 1916 – 6 June 2018) was an English poet and the wife of Harold Wilson, who twice served as British prime minister. She was the first British prime minister's spouse to become a centenarian, living to the age of 102 years, 145 days.
Life
Gladys Mary Baldwin was born in Diss, Norfolk, the daughter of the Reverend Daniel Baldwin, who was a Congregationalist minister. She attended boarding school at Milton Mount College leaving aged 16 to attend a secretarial course for two years. She was employed as a stenographer at Lever Brothers in Port Sunlight before marrying Harold Wilson on New Year's Day 1940 at Mansfield College, Oxford. Baldwin and Wilson had two sons, Robin (born 1943) and Giles (born 1948).
In 1970, her volume of poetry Selected Poems was published, and, in 1976, Mary Wilson was one of three judges of the 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, Wilson was not satisfied with life in politics. It was this detachment which gave the Private Eye spoof "Mrs Wilson's Diary", the supposed diary of Wilson, written in the style of the BBC's daily radio serial Mrs Dale's Diary, a spurious look of authenticity.
Politically, she opposed her husband in the 1975 European Communities membership referendum by voting against continued membership and in her support for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
“Mary Wilson, Lady Wilson of Rievaulx” enters the record as english peeress and poet (1916–2018). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mary, Wilson and Lady can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Aug 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3296260. VIAF identifies the subject as 26552326. The Library of Congress control number is nb90630113. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1916, 2018, 1940 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Wilson, Lady Wilson of Rievaulx” 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.