Kathleen Mary Agnes Dalyell ( dee-EL) (née Wheatley; 17 November 1937 – 27 December 2025) was a Scottish conservationist and supporter of the Labour Party. She was the wife of Tam Dalyell, a Labour Member of Parliament (MP).
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Early career and marriage
Kathleen Wheatley was born in 1937. Her father was Lord Wheatley, a judge, a Lord Justice Clerk and a Labour MP. Her great-uncle was John Wheatley, a Labour MP on the left of the party, and health minister in the Ramsay Macdonald government. She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Aberdeen before going to Edinburgh University to read history. Like her future husband, she trained to be a teacher. She taught at schools in Glasgow and Edinburgh, including a period at James Gillespie's High School, the setting for the novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
She married Tam Dalyell on Boxing Day 1963 – he was then already MP for West Lothian – and they had a son (Sir Gordon Wheatley Dalyell, now the 12th Baronet) and a daughter (Moira Shearer, née Dalyell), who are both lawyers. Kathleen Dalyell was from a staunch Roman Catholic background, and they married in St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Edinburgh, whereas her husband was associated with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Neither changed their religion.