MARGARET Vaughan is the wife of former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Labour politician Alistair Darling.
Darling has sadly passed away at the age of 70 — here we look at his wife’s career and their children.
Margaret McQueen Vaughan and Alistair Darling were married in 1986.
Darling sadly passed away at the age of 70 on November 30, 2023.
A statement issued on behalf of his family said: “The death of Alistair Darling, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and long-serving member of the Labour cabinet, was announced in Edinburgh today.
“Mr Darling, the much-loved husband of Margaret and beloved father of Calum and Anna, died after a short spell in Western General Hospital under the wonderful care of the cancer team.”
Although she was based in Scotland while working as a journalist — meaning the couple had a mostly long-distance relationship — during Darling’s stint at 11 Downing Street, while their son was at university and their daughter was on her gap year in 2007, Margaret joined her husband in London.
Speaking about this period in 2011, Darling told the Scotsman: “To have her upstairs was tremendously helpful.
“If you wanted to escape for ten minutes even, you could do it.
“Actually, we enjoyed it, so much so that Margaret comes down to London a lot more than she would have done in years gone past.
“I would have found it very, very difficult to have dealt with everything if I hadn’t had a friendly face upstairs.
“Also, as chancellor, you have to do a certain amount of entertaining, and so on, and it’s very helpful if there are two of you rather than one of you.
“The flat is a temporary home for whoever is in it, and you forget that at your peril! But it does help if it is your home.”
Margaret is a former journalist who has worked for the Daily Record, Radio Forth and the Glasgow Herald.
She reportedly took a break from journalism when the Labour Party won the 1997 general election.
In 2010 Vaughan launched a cookery blog to promote Scottish cuisine called Maggie’s Kitchen Menus.
In her first post she wrote: “The gas men are digging holes around the house and the garden looks like a WW1 trench.
“Will have to fall back on all the oven cooking methods learned before the Aga and the house it lived in was sold.”
Later adding: “A quick post for Catherine who wants the sort of roast beef we served at the party last month.
“It’s a sin not to serve it with Yorkshire pudding.”
There isn’t much verifiable information available about what Vaughan has done since in her career.
The couple have two children together — a son, Calum, and a daughter, Anna.
Calum was born in 1988, while Anna was born in 1990.
In 2011 Darling published a memoir titled Back from the Brink: 1,000 Days at Number 11, which he says he wrote for his children “to explain to them where I’ve been for the last three years”.
