Alexander Shaw was a lawyer by profession. He studied at Trinity College, Oxford and was President of the Oxford Union in 1905. He was called to the bar in 1908.

He married, in 1913, Lady Margaret Cargill Mackay daughter of James Mackay later 1st Earl Inchcape. They had four children: one son and three daughters. He served in the Royal Marine Artillery during World War One and was involved in the Battle of the Somme.

In 1915, Alexander Shaw succeeded William Gladstone as MP for the Kilmarnock Burghs; he held the seat until its abolition for the 1918 general election. He was then elected as a Coalition Liberal for the new county constituency of Kilmarnock, retaining the seat as a Liberal in 1922. He resigned from the House of Commons on 12 November 1923 by the procedural device of accepting a nominal appointment as Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. 

Outside Parliament, he was a director of the Bank of England and Chairman of P & O.

The son of the Law Lord Thomas Shaw, 1st Baron Craigmyle, he succeeded to the peerage on his father’s death in 1937.

He died in 1944, aged 61 and was succeeded by his only son Thomas Donald Mackay Shaw (1923–1998).

Copyright: © National Portrait Gallery, London

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