Early life and ordained ministry
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 St. Paul's Scottish Episcopal (Anglican) 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 was on record as being scathingly critical of the Rev. Robert Anderson Jardine, of Darlington, who, against the rules of the Church of England, conducted the wedding of the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Warfield in 1937. He 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]
Dean of Westminster
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]
Retirement
He retired to Canterbury where, although he was married,[a] he and his wife met only once a week for lunch.[13] He died on 3 May 1966.[14] Don’s diaries, covering the period 1931-1946 and edited by Robert Beaken, were published in 2020.[15]
