Talk:Mary Wilson, Lady Wilson of Rievaulx

Life
I am pretty sure she was born in Diss,

Article location
Please see Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (names and titles) for discussion that could lead to this article being renamed. Timrollpickering 19:29, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Date of birth
According to this article, she was already 90 years old in June 2007 and was still 90 years old in February 2008 according to this article. This means that she was born sometime between February 14, 1917 and June 24, 1917. Cheers, CP 04:27, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Title
Baron X of Y may be referred to as Lord X, or even Baron X, but never Lord X of Y.

Example: One might refer to Baron Olivier of Brighton as Lord Olivier, or as Baron Olivier, but not as Lord Olivier of Brighton.

Same deal for baronesses, whether in their own right or simply as spouses of barons.

So, I believe this article should be either:
 * Mary Wilson, Lady Wilson or
 * Mary Wilson, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx

Comments? --  Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   10:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You've fallen into the common trap of confusing territorial designation with peerage title. Laurence Olivier's peerage title was just 'Baron Olivier', with Brighton being the territorial designation. Harold Wilson's peerage title was 'Baron Wilson of Rievaulx', making his wife 'Lady Wilson of Rievaulx'. Sam Blacketer (talk) 12:52, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Surely she is just Lady Wilson not Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx? Geoffrey Howe became Lord Howe and his wife Elpseth became a baroness in her own right. Mary Wilson was not a baroness in her own right, so surely just Lady Wilson? --2.25.135.156 (talk) 15:29, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved Aervanath (talk) 23:26, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Mary Wilson, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx → Mary Wilson, Lady Wilson of Rievaulx – Requesting the undoing of the recent undiscussed page move, which was possibly based on the misunderstanding above. While it is technically true that the wife of a life Baron may be referred to as a Baroness, this is not the common usage, which is instead 'Lady'. According to Debretts, "The wife of a baron is known as Lady (Poole)". There appears to be not a single source in a printed book which has ever referred to Mary Wilson as 'Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx" while there are several using 'Lady Wilson of Rievaulx'. WP:NCROY does not comment on whether to use 'Baroness' or 'Lady' for the wife of a Baron. Sam Blacketer (talk) 12:52, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support, for reasons given. I'll mention this at WT:NCROY as well. --Kotniski (talk) 10:20, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Support, for reasons given. Debrett's is the ultimate reliable source for forms of address (British titles), and has been for a long time. Furthermore, I have never seen Lady Wilson formally addressed in any other way. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose, for reasons of consistency. It would be anomalous to refer to male life peers as "Baron" and their wives as "Lady". It should be either "Lord" and "Lady" or "Baron" and "Baroness". (I'd note that the argument as to common usage applies equally to male life peers, who are commonly referred to as "Lord X", not "Baron X", but we have chosen to use the formal designation. I'm not saying I'm entirely in favour of the current convention (I'd rather omit the surname and switch to "Lord" - having, for instance, John, Lord Smith of London (and even John, 3rd Lord London for hereditary barons) - but while the current convention exists it should at least be applied consistently.) Proteus (Talk) 11:57, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * But there is no current convention for wives of life peers. By using "Lady" here, we make a useful distinction (and one that is quite commonly made in the real world in the same way) - between the Baronesses (peers in their own right) and the Ladies (wives of peers). (Of course, most wives of life peers either won't be notable or won't need disambiguating, or can be disambiguated according to whatever it is they're notable for, so this question won't arise very often. But we shouldn't do it in a way which, as the nominator notes, leads to names that are never actually used.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * But we "do it in a way which ... leads to names that are never actually used" for their husbands, so why not them? (That's not quite correct for either of them, albeit in a technical sense, as "Baron" and "Baroness" are part of their legal names, so they are both used on legal documents, but it is true that neither are ever used in common usage.) And I think it's more important to be consistent between Lord and Lady X than to emphasise the distinction between Lady X (wife of Lord X) and Baroness Y (female life peer). (My preferred method would of course allow both, but that's an argument for a different day.) Proteus (Talk) 12:39, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I don't much like the use of "Baron" in article titles either. But for their wives (where we don't have a convention yet), I would rather be consistent with Wikipedia's general practice of following usage and avoiding original research, than try to be consistent with a convention that is rather dubious in itself (particularly since we can take the opportunity to distinguish the wives of peers from the in-their-own-right peeresses). Unless we can avoid the question by choosing some other disambiguator - but she's not really best known as a poet, and something like "Mary Wilson (prime minister's wife)" sounds rather awkward, though I would personally actually prefer that solution. --Kotniski (talk) 12:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A couple of years ago I'd have agreed with you, but it was pointed out to me that "Baroness" is correct for wives of barons. Now I'm not sure which way to turn. Deb (talk) 12:58, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Article title
It seems that the title of this artice is rather anomalous. While it is obviously correct that Lady Wilson is addressed as "The Rt. Hon. The Lady Wilson", the convention of titling the article of a person in her position in the form "Full name, Title" presumably means that the title itself should be used (as in the case of men), rather than the title accorded by social practice. On this basis, it would be better that the article be titled "Mary Wilson, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx", and that the box with her information have the heading "The Rt. Hon. The Lady Wilson of Rievaulx". Certainly, for the article title, this is what has been observed in the case of Elizabeth Home, Audrey Callaghan and Mary Soames, for example, all of whom are wives of life peers. The fact is that in social usage, it is as incorrect to accord a life baron the form "The The Rt. Hon. The Baron X" as it is to accord his wife the title "The Rt. Hon. The Baroness X", but Wikipedia still puts them under the article title, "Full Name, Baron X", since Baron is the accurate description of the peerage title that they hold (just as 1st Baron, 2nd Baron &c would be the accurate description in the case of hereditary barons), and with the exception of this article and the one on Lady Baltimore (so far as I can see), Wikipedia seems to apply its naming conventions similarly for wives of barons both life and hereditary. 129.67.121.166 (talk) 15:48, 10 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry the first line of the above was meant to read "While it is obviously correct that Lady Wilson is addressed as "The Rt. Hon. The Lady Wilson of Rievaulx"... 129.67.121.166 (talk) 15:50, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the anonymous user. Besides, Mary Wilson, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx is factually correct and is supported by WikiProject Peerage and Baronetage. I see no reason to leave the article inconsistent with others in Category:British baronesses. Surtsicna (talk) 19:00, 10 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the general rule is wrong. Baronesses by marriage are almost always called 'Lady' and almost never as 'Baroness'. Almost all of those in Category:British Baronesses are Baronesses in their own right, which is different. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:09, 10 February 2013 (UTC)
 * That is not true. A vast of majority of women in that category held their titles solely through marriage, much like Mary Wilson. All peeresses lesser in rank than duchesses are almost always called "Lady X". In fact, all peers lesser in rank than dukes are almost always called "Lord X". That is a social convention. Mary Wilson was nevertheless legally "Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx", as the wife of "Baron Wilson of Rievaulx". That said, I do not see how the general rule is wrong or why the article should not be consistent with other articles in the said category. Surtsicna (talk) 20:25, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

The wife of a British Prime Minister has no independent official status and the idea that predecessors and successors should be listed as though she had is unnecessarily pompous, especially in the case of this thoroughly decent person. I would suggest that the boxed feature indicating her alleged immediates be dropped in all similar cases. Apart for anything else, there is an implication that all three mentioned were married to the OFFICE, not their husbands. What would Margot Asquith have said?81.153.23.148 (talk) 17:10, 17 March 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject
"The subject or topic of all articles, including those on centenarians and supercentenarians, must meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline at a minimum." The World's Oldest People project page repeatedly refers to "centenarians and supercentenarians" so centenarians appear to be included in it.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 09:31, 8 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi . The idea behind the World's Oldest People Wikiproject (at least these days) is to help manage the constant flow of vandalism, fancruft, and edit warring that occurs on articles related to extreme longevity, which is detailed thoroughly in the Arbitration Committee case linked in the banner, as well as having a center to build consensus and, I suppose on rare occasions, actually improve articles. As articles such as this, about individuals who are notable and happened to reach old age, don't generally suffer from the problems in the Arb case, they aren't meant to be included in that project, otherwise it would be flooded with tangentially-related articles (i.e. anyone who happened to turn 100), which would distort the purpose and make it difficult to focus on combating the real problems. Centenarians can be included, but it's generally those that might be affected by Wikipedia's problems with longevity-related articles (i.e. someone is the oldest in the country, but only happens to be 108 or someone is the oldest ever nun/driver/university graduate, but never actually reached 110). Hope that clears things up; I guess there should probably be a better description on the project page itself. I'll work on that Canadian   Paul  09:40, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

The "Kitchen Cabinet"
I am fairly certain that in the 1970's when Wilson was Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition, or simply a senior Labour Party member, that there was a lot of discussion about what was termed "the Kitchen cabinet" of which Mary Wilson was allegedly the major character where her circle of friends influenced the decisions of Harold Wilson. I am certain that there must be material (Tony Crosland Diaries or Denis Healy memoirs?) of that era to confirm. As I remember (I was pre-teenager at the time) this was a major news/current affairs issue of the day. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:16, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Her poetry
Anything to say about her work and its critical reception? I would have thought a brief positioning statement would be appropriate. Valetude (talk) 00:11, 12 March 2021 (UTC)