Alan Don

Born into a manufacturing Dundee family,[2] the son of Robert Bogle Don and Lucy Flora Campbell, he was educated at Rugby and Magdalen College, Oxford. Deciding the family business was not for him,[3] studied for ordination at Cuddesdon College before becoming a curate in Redcar followed by an incumbency in Yorkshire.

There then followed a 10-year period as provost of the cathedral in his native city. In 1927 he commissioned Dundee architect Patrick Thoms to design his house.[4]

From 1931 until 1941 he was secretary to Cosmo Gordon Lang and became a chaplain to King George V.[5] Already the Speaker’s chaplain[6] in 1941 he became a canon of Westminster Abbey as rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, commonly called "the parish church of the House of Commons".[7] His brother was Air Vice Marshal Francis Don.[8]

This was followed in 1946 [9] by elevation to the post of Dean of Westminster,[10] a post he was to hold for 13 years, a period which included the Queen's Coronation [11] One other event in his time as Dean was the theft of the Stone of Scone just prior to the Coronation. As a Scot, Don felt this theft acutely and was important to the return of the Coronation Stone to Westminster.[12]

He retired to Canterbury where, although he was married,[lower-alpha 1] he and his wife met only once a week for lunch.[13] He died on 3 May 1966.[14]