| Honorific-Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Viscount Eccles | |
| Office: | Paymaster General |
| Primeminister: | Edward Heath |
| Term Start: | 20 June 1970 |
| Term End: | 5 June 1973 |
| Predecessor: | Harold Lever |
| Successor: | Maurice Macmillan |
| Office1: | Minister for the Arts |
| Primeminister1: | Edward Heath |
| Term Start1: | 20 June 1970 |
| Term End1: | 5 June 1973 |
| Predecessor1: | Jennie Lee |
| Successor1: | Norman St John-Stevas |
| Office2: | Minister of Education |
| Primeminister2: | Harold Macmillan |
| Term Start2: | 14 October 1959 |
| Term End2: | 13 July 1962 |
| Predecessor2: | Geoffrey Lloyd |
| Successor2: | Edward Boyle |
| Primeminister3: | Anthony Eden |
| Term Start3: | 18 October 1954 |
| Term End3: | 13 January 1957 |
| Predecessor3: | Florence Horsbrugh |
| Successor3: | Quintin Hogg |
| Office4: | President of the Board of Trade |
| Primeminister4: | Harold Macmillan |
| Term Start4: | 13 January 1957 |
| Term End4: | 14 October 1959 |
| Predecessor4: | Peter Thorneycroft |
| Successor4: | Reginald Maudling |
| Office5: | Minister of Works |
| Primeminister5: | Winston Churchill |
| Term Start5: | 1 November 1951 |
| Term End5: | 18 October 1954 |
| Predecessor5: | George Brown |
| Successor5: | Nigel Birch |
| Office6: | Member of the House of Lords |
| Status6: | Lord Temporal |
| Term Label6: | Hereditary peerage |
| Term Start6: | 13 July 1962 |
| Term End6: | 24 February 1999 |
| Successor6: | The 2nd Viscount Eccles |
| Office7: | Member of Parliament for Chippenham |
| Term Start7: | 24 August 1943 |
| Term End7: | 13 July 1962 |
| Predecessor7: | Victor Cazalet |
| Successor7: | Daniel Awdry |
| Birth Date: | 18 September 1904 |
| Nationality: | British |
| Party: | Conservative |
| Spouse: | |
| Children: | John Eccles, 2nd Viscount Eccles Hon. Simon Eccles Selina Petty-FitzMaurice, Marchioness of Lansdowne |
| Alma Mater: | New College, Oxford |
| Occupation: | Politician, businessman |
David McAdam Eccles, 1st Viscount Eccles (18 September 1904 – 24 February 1999), was an English Conservative politician.
Eccles was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he obtained a second-class degree in PPE. He worked with the Central Mining Corporation in London and Johannesburg. During the Second World War he worked for the Ministry of Economic Warfare from 1939 to 1940 and for the Ministry of Production from 1942 to 1943 and was Economic Adviser to the British ambassadors at Lisbon and Madrid from 1940 to 1942.
Eccles was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Chippenham in a wartime by-election in 1943, a seat he held until 1962. He served in the Conservative administrations of Churchill, Eden and Macmillan respectively as Minister of Works from 1951 to 1954 (in which position he helped organise the 1953 Coronation and was appointed KCVO), as Minister of Education from 1954 to 1957 and again from 1959 to 1962 and as President of the Board of Trade from 1957 to 1959. Eccles was also President of the Board of Trade in January 1957.[1]
In 1962 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Eccles, of Chute in the County of Wiltshire, and in 1964 he was created Viscount Eccles, of Chute in the County of Wiltshire. Lord Eccles returned to the government in 1970 when Edward Heath appointed him Paymaster General and Minister for the Arts, a post he held until 1973. As Minister for the Arts he clashed with the Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain Arnold Goodman over the funding of controversial plays and exhibitions and introduced mandatory admission charges at public museums and galleries. Lord Eccles was made a Doctor of Science (DSc) in 1966 by Loughborough University.[2] He also received an Honorary Science Doctorate from the University of Bath in 1972.[3]
Eccles married, firstly, the Hon. Sybil Frances Dawson (1904–1977), daughter of Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn, on 1 October 1929. They had three children:
A collection of the couple's wartime letters were published under the title By Safe Hand: Letters of Sybil & David Eccles 1939-42 (Bodley Head, 1983).
Widowed in 1977, he married again, this time to book collector and philanthropist Mary Morley Crapo Hyde (1912–2003) on 26 September 1984.[4] He died in 1999 at the age of 94, at home of natural causes, leaving an estate of approximately £2.4 million.[5]
| Escutcheon: | Chevronny Argent and Sable per pale counterchanged two Torches erect Or enflamed proper |
| Crest: | A three-masted Ship sails furled pennons and flags flying Or between two Wings addorsed Sable |
| Supporters: | On either side a Wolf Sable armed and langued Gules gorged with a Plain Collar attached thereto a Chain reflexed over the back and resting the interior hind paw on a Portcullis chained Or |
| Motto: | Truth and Beauty[6] |