Dominic Lawson

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]

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 2009, Lawson published an editorial asserting that women's athletic events receive less media coverage because they aren't as impressive as the men's, making the game less interesting to watch. Unlike women, "with truly exceptional men, there is something extra, a kind of gasping astonishment on our part that such strength and power could be encompassed by a human being at all." He claimed most of the women's cricket crowd was the athletes' friends and family, and compared women's teams negatively to the Special Olympics, criticizing the concept of inclusivity. He concludes the article by saying that the BBC shouldn't have to broadcast people like his daughter, who has special needs, participating in sports.^[13]

In 2016, Lawson attributed the result of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum to the legalisation of same-sex marriage, although he personally supported same sex marriage. "I had lunch with UKIP’s leader at that time. I recall how gleeful he was at the way the gay marriage row was sending shire Tories in droves to switch to UKIP membership. Though Farage himself is a libertarian, and definitely no moralist, he exploited this to the full."^[14]

• 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