| The Right Honourable Lord Rees-Mogg |
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|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | 14 July 1928 Bristol, England |
| Political party | Crossbencher |
William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg (born 14 July 1928 in Bristol) is an English journalist and life peer.
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Rees-Mogg was educated at Clifton College Preparatory School[1] in Bristol and Charterhouse School in Godalming, followed by Balliol College, Oxford. He was President of the Oxford Union in 1951.
Rees-Mogg began his career in journalism in London at The Financial Times in 1952,[2] before moving to The Sunday Times in 1960, later becoming its Deputy Editor. Here he wrote an article which many believe convinced Alec Douglas-Home to resign as Tory leader, making way for Edward Heath, in July 1965.
He was Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Chester-le-Street in a by-election on 27 September 1956, losing to the Labour candidate Norman Pentland by 21,287 votes.
Rees-Mogg was editor of The Times from 1967 to 1981, and still writes comment for that paper.
He has also been a member of the BBC's Board of Governors and chairman of the Arts Council, overseeing a major reform of the latter body which halved the number of arts organisations receiving regular funding and reduced the Council's direct activities. Having been High Sheriff of Somerset from 1978 to 1979, he was made a life peer in 1988 as Baron Rees-Mogg of Hinton Blewett in the County of Avon, and sits in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher. He is currently a member of the European Reform Forum.
Rees-Mogg is co-author, with James Dale Davidson, of The Sovereign Individual, The Great Reckoning, and Blood in the Streets.
Rees-Mogg's stand on drugs led to his being satirised as "Mogadon Man" by Private Eye, which also mocks the perceived inaccuracy of his economic and political predictions by referring to him as "Mystic Mogg", a parody on "Mystic Meg", a tabloid astrologist.
Lord Rees-Mogg is Chairman of The Zurich Club, "a private, international network of trustworthy and knowledgeable investors and entrepreneurs", and is a regular contributor to a subscription investment advice newsletter, The Fleet Street Letter.
Writing in The Times in 2001, Lord Rees-Mogg, who has a house in Somerset, described himself as "a country person who spends most of his time in London", and attempted to define the characteristics of a "country person". He also wrote that Tony Blair was as unpopular in rural England as Mrs Thatcher had been in Scotland.
He is currently the Chairman of the London publishing firm Pickering & Chatto Publishers and of NewsMax Media and also writes a weekly column for The Mail on Sunday.[3]
His youngest daughter, Annunziata Rees-Mogg (born 25 March 1979), stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the 2005 general election in Aberavon, and in Somerton and Frome at the 2010 election.[4] His son, Jacob Rees-Mogg, stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the 1997 and 2001 general elections (in Central Fife and The Wrekin respectively), but in 2010 was elected Conservative MP for the new constituency of North East Somerset.[5]
Rees-Mogg was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!.
Rees-Mogg, a Roman Catholic, has argued that the image of an ultra-conservative papacy is false and that the Vatican must overhaul its PR machine.[6]
| Media offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by ? |
Deputy Editor of the Sunday Times 1964–1967 |
Succeeded by Frank Giles |
| Preceded by William Haley |
Editor of The Times 1967–1981 |
Succeeded by Harold Evans |
| Cultural offices | ||
| Preceded by Kenneth Robinson |
Chair of the Arts Council of Great Britain 1982–1989 |
Succeeded by Peter Palumbo |
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