Dixon, Daniel Stewart Thomas Bingham (1912–95), 2nd Baron Glentoran , army officer and Ulster unionist politician, was born 19 January 1912 at Holywood, Co. Down, the only son of Herbert Dixon (qv) and his wife, Emily Ina Florence (d. 1957), daughter of John George Barry Bingham, 5th Baron Clanmorris; his father was a member of both the British and Northern Ireland houses of commons and was ennobled as Baron Glentoran (8 July 1939). The young ‘Danny’ Dixon (as he was called) was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Commissioned in the Grenadier Guards, he served in Egypt in the early 1930s. During the second world war he fought with the British expeditionary force in France, and was a member of Eisenhower's staff in Washington, liaising over plans for allied landings in Italy, in which he eventually took part as second in command of his regiment's 3rd battalion. After service in Palestine, he retired from the army with the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel (1946).
On his return to Northern Ireland, Dixon joined his family's business, Thomas S. Dixon, timber suppliers, and also farmed, first at Comber, Co. Down, later at Drummadaragh, Doagh, Co. Antrim. On his father's death (20 July 1950) he succeeded as Lord Glentoran and three months later (31 October) was elected in his place as Ulster unionist MP for Belfast Bloomfield. His seat in the Northern Ireland house of commons enabled him to take on the post of parliamentary secretary to the minister of commerce (1952–3) and then to be minister of commerce (1953–61) in the government of Viscount Brookeborough (qv). He resigned his seat (February 1961) in order to enter the senate, of which he was leader (1961–3) and then speaker (1963–73). Of a conservative disposition, he opposed the suspension (later abolition) of the Northern Ireland parliament (1972). In semi-retirement he was lord lieutenant of Belfast (1976–95).
Lord Glentoran died 22 July 1995. He married (1933) Lady Diana Wellesley, daughter of the 3rd Earl Cowley, and with her had two sons and one daughter. The elder son, Thomas Robin Valerian (b. 1935), the 3rd baron, was educated at Eton, served as a major in the Grenadier Guards, and won an Olympic gold medal in the bobsleigh event (1964); he later became a conservative front-bencher in the house of lords.