He and his family—first wife Victoria Florence (née Harris), whom he married in 1924,[2] and daughter Margaret—and Taunton's school were evacuated to Bournemouth from Southampton in 1940.

[2] Having long been involved with left-wing politics, King first stood as a Labour party candidate in the 1945 general election.

Labour won with a massive landslide, but King was unsuccessful in his attempt to take the ultra-safe Conservative seat of New Forest and Christchurch.

[2] His wife, Victoria Florence King, was also politically active - a town councillor and Mayor of Southampton in coronation year, 1953.

[2] In the 1950 general election, King successfully fought the newly created Southampton Test seat, albeit with a very small majority.

[2] However, at the 1955 election, King switched his candidacy to the far safer neighbouring seat of Southampton Itchen, where he was re-elected until he left Parliament in 1971.

He was instrumental in gaining UK support for the UNESCO project of the raising of the temples at Abu Simbel after the flooding of the Nile by the Aswan dam.

When Harold Wilson was elected as the first Labour Prime Minister for 13 years in 1964, King was selected as the Chairman of Ways and Means and the Deputy Speaker.

While serving as speaker, King was responsible for the speeding up of question time and for changing the dress code to allow women MPs to wear trousers in the House of Commons chamber.

An anecdote in Order Order: The Rise and Fall of Political Drinking recalled King's inebriation with the story that "Horace came in at 9:25pm, and he had two goes at getting up into his chair and the second time he fell to the right across the Clerks' Table with his wig 45 degrees to the left and Bob Mellish (the Government Chief Whip) called out, "You're a disgrace, Horace, and I'll have you out of that chair within three months".

During the parliamentary recess in 1966 King lectured in Athens and Venice on the British parliament and democracy also attended events in Bonn and the Middle East.