Edward 'Lance' Mallalieu was MP for the Brigg constituency in Lincolnshire from 1948 until the time he retired in 1974, having previously being a Liberal MP for Colne Valley from 1931 to 1935.
He was a key player, helping in my father's fight to purchase a house - the house within which I grew up.
Oxford educated and a trained barrister, he boasted a full head of wavy hair that was once blonde but now silver. His appearance was polished, his manner erudite, but he possessed sufficient of the common touch to comfortably converse with his constituents. He knew them and they knew him sufficiently well to re-elect him several times.
At a party political level, he was the definitive safe pair of hands. The word in Westminster was that his star was very much in the ascendancy. Should Labour win the coming election, he may well be heading for great things. He was, however, perhaps too good a constituency MP for his own good for him ever to make serious inroads into the higher echelons of government.*
*From I am a Stranger in a Strange Land, Ch. 26