William Legge, 10th Earl of Dartmouth

William Legge, 10th Earl of Dartmouth (born 23 September 1949), styled Viscount Lewisham from 1962 to 1997, is a British politician and hereditary peer, usually known as William Dartmouth.

From 2009 to 2019, Dartmouth sat in the European Parliament as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South West England. He was elected for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and served as national spokesman on trade from 2010 to 2018. He resigned from UKIP in 2018 due to his dissatisfaction with the direction of the party.

Early life and education Dartmouth is the eldest son of the 9th Earl of Dartmouth and Raine McCorquodale, the daughter of romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland. He became a stepbrother of Lady Diana Spencer when in 1976 his mother remarried.

Dartmouth was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was elected an officer of the Oxford University Conservative Association and of the Oxford Union Society. He graduated BA, later promoted to MA, and proceeded to the Harvard Business School, where he graduated MBA.

Life and career Dartmouth qualified as a chartered accountant, which was also the occupation of his father Gerald Legge, 9th Earl of Dartmouth.

In 1975, he became a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

At the European Parliament election of 2009, Dartmouth was elected as the second UKIP MEP for the South West England region and re-elected in 2014, when he was the first UKIP MEP on the regional list. In the European Parliament he sat with the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group (later the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy) and served on the Committee on International Trade. In 2010, he became UKIP's national spokesman on Trade and Industry and in February 2016 was appointed as one of the party's two national Deputy Chairmen.

In September 2018, Dartmouth resigned from the UK Independence Party, citing concerns about the behaviour of the new Leader, Gerard Batten, and complaining that the party was "widely perceived as both homophobic and anti-Islamic". Dartmouth said he would not be joining another political party and would serve the rest of his term in the European Parliament as an Independent, continuing to represent the South West of England and Gibraltar.

Family and personal life

In June 2009, Dartmouth married Melbourne-born former model Fiona Campbell, now styled Lady Dartmouth, whose first husband, Matt Handbury, is a nephew of Rupert Murdoch. They subsequently divorced.

Dartmouth has a son, Gerald Glen Kavanagh-Legge (born 2005), from his previous relationship with the television producer Claire Kavanagh.

In 2025 in Gibraltar he married privately to Diandra Luker, former wife of Michael Douglas.

The heir presumptive to the peerages is Dartmouth's brother, the Hon. Rupert Legge (born 1951), whose heir is his son Edward Legge (born 1986).