English journalist (born 1956)
Dominic Ralph Campden Lawson
(born 17 December 1956)
[1]
is a British journalist.
Background
[
edit
]
Lawson was born to a
Jewish
family,
[2]
the elder son of
Conservative
politician
Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby
and his first wife, socialite Vanessa Salmon. He was educated at
Eton College
, an all-boys independent boarding school, for one year, which he "absolutely hated".
[3]
He then completed his schooling at
Westminster School
, also an independent school. He studied history at
Christ Church, Oxford
. Lawson had three sisters: the TV chef and writer
Nigella Lawson
; Horatia; and Thomasina (who died of breast cancer in 1993 in her early 30s). Their mother, an heir to the
Lyons Corner House
empire, died from
liver cancer
in 1985. Lawson's father was
Chancellor of the Exchequer
between 1983 and 1989.
He has been married to
Rosa Monckton
, a Roman Catholic, the daughter of the
2nd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
, since 1991. The Lawsons have two daughters (another daughter, Natalia, was stillborn), Domenica Marianna Tertia and Savannah Vanessa Lucia; Domenica, who is a goddaughter of
Diana, Princess of Wales
was born with
Down syndrome
.
[4]
Career
[
edit
]
Lawson joined the
BBC
as a researcher, and then wrote for the
Financial Times
. From 1990 until 1995 he was editor of
The Spectator
magazine, a post his father had occupied from 1966 to 1970.
[5]
In his capacity as editor of
The Spectator
he conducted, in June 1990, an interview with the cabinet minister
Nicholas Ridley
in which Ridley expressed opinions immensely hostile to Germany and the
European Community
, likening the initiatives of
Jacques Delors
and others to those of
Hitler
.
[6]
Lawson added to the damage caused, by claiming that the opinions expressed by Ridley were shared by the Prime Minister,
Margaret Thatcher
. Ridley was forced to resign from the
cabinet
shortly after this incident. Although some senior Tories
[
who?
]
called for Lawson to be fired, his proprietor,
Conrad Black
, stood by him. Under Lawson's five-year editorship, the magazine's circulation grew from 30,000 to 50,000.
[
citation needed
]
From 1995 until 2005, Lawson was editor of
The Sunday Telegraph
. In 2006, he started to write columns for
The Independent
newspaper and in 2008, he became the main columnist for
The Sunday Times
. In his article for
The Independent
dated 2 September 2013, he wrote that it would be his last for that newspaper, although he did not give a reason.
He was a strong chess player and was the author of
The Inner Game
, on the inside story of the 1993
World Chess Championship
. He was also involved in the organisation of the 1983 World Chess championship semi-final.
[7]
Lawson wrote a monthly chess column in
Standpoint
.
[8]
In 2014 he was elected president of the English Chess Federation.
[9]
Richard Tomlinson
wrote in 2001 that Lawson had worked with the intelligence agency
MI6
, but Lawson denied being an agent.
[10]
Boris Johnson
, then editor of
The Spectator
, wrote a pseudonymous article on the subject which Lawson (then editor of
The Sunday Telegraph
) found "intensely annoying" because of the potential increase in the threat to his newspaper's foreign correspondents.
[11]
However, in 1998, Lawson acknowledged that articles written in 1994, under a false name with a Sarajevo dateline while he was editor of the
Spectator
magazine, were "probably" written by an MI6 officer.
[12]
In 2016, Lawson attributed the result of the
United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
to the legalisation of
same-sex marriage
.
[13]
In 2023, Lawson wrote an opinionated article on ADHD which many commentators and influencers online called out for it being ableist.
[14]
References
[
edit
]
Publications
[
edit
]
- Lawson, Dominic,
The Inner Game
, Hardinge Simpole Limited, 2008,
ISBN
1-84382-137-0
- Diamond, John
,
Dawkins, Richard
(Foreword), Dominic Lawson (Editor),
Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations
, Vintage, 2001,
ISBN
0-09-942833-4
- Lawson, Dominic,
End Game: Kasparov vs. Short
, Harmony, 1994,
ISBN
0-517-59810-8