DALYELL OF THE BINNS, Kathleen Mary Agnes, Hon Lady (nee WHEATLEY) (1937-2025)
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Kathleen Dalyell, chatelaine of The Binns, conservationist and highly valued public servant
With her MP husband Tam she formed a potent partnership in Scotland’s political establishment
Kathleen Dalyell, who has died aged 88, embodied all the contradictions of Scotland’s pre-devolution Labour Establishment – contradictions shared by her Old Etonian husband Tam, described by Andrew Marr as “possibly the only member of the Socialist Campaign Group to keep peacocks”.
Through her father Lord Wheatley, a distinguished judge and former MP, she was the great-niece of John Wheatley, the Clydeside firebrand who became health minister in Ramsay MacDonald’s first Labour government and was reckoned to be the intellectual mainspring of Scottish Labour.
Yet her marriage to Dalyell, scourge of Margaret Thatcher over the sinking of the General Belgrano, made her chatelaine of The Binns, near Linlithgow, his 17th-century seat gifted to the National Trust for Scotland in 1944; for 45 years from 1972 she administered it for the Trust.
The flair she brought to the running of The Binns, about whose history and distinctive features she published a book in 1973, led to her serving creditably on several heritage bodies. For five years from 2000 she chaired the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland, and for almost two decades she was director of the Heritage Education Trust.
She also chaired the Bo’ness Heritage Trust, and was vice-chairman of the Architectural Heritage Society for Scotland and a member of the Historic Buildings Council for Scotland, the Ancient Monuments Board and the Royal Fine Art Commission for Scotland […..]
Kathleen Mary Agnes Wheatley was born on November 17 1937, the only daughter of John Thomas Wheatley and the former Agnes Nichol. She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh University, graduating in history in 1960.
After training at Craiglockhart College she taught briefly in Glasgow and Edinburgh until her marriage to Tam Dalyell in 1963. He died in 2017; she is survived by their daughter and son.
Kathleen Dalyell, born November 17 1937, died December 27 2025
