William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg

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William Rees-Mogg Kt (* 14. July 1928 in Bristol , England ; † 29. December 2012 ) was a British journalist , author and politician of the Conservative Party , longtime editor of the daily newspaper The Times and since 1988 as a Life Peer member of the House of Lords .

He is the father of the politician Jacob Rees-Mogg and the politician Annunziata Rees-Mogg .

Life

Journalist and longtime editor of The Times

The son of a Sheriff of Somerset from a local bourgeois family and an Irish-American Catholic mother grew up in Bristol. After visiting the Clifton College and the Charterhouse School graduated Rees-Mogg, the 1951 president of the Oxford Union was studying at Balliol College of the University of Oxford and entered 1952 as a journalist in the editorial of business newspaper Financial Times one for which it between 1955 and 1960 worked as a lead article author and from 1957 to 1960 as assistant to the editor . During this time he ran for the Conservative Party in a by-election on September 27, 1956 and in the general election on October 8, 1959 in the constituency of Chester-le-Street for a member of the House of Commons , but was clearly defeated by the Labor Party candidate , Norman Pentland .

In 1960 Rees-Mogg moved to the weekly newspaper The Sunday Times , where he was initially city editor and between 1961 and 1963 editor for politics and economics, before he was finally deputy editor of this newspaper from 1964 to 1967. From 1961 to 1963 he also served as Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party's National Advisory Committee on Civic Education. In the meantime he was President of the Chartered Institute of Journalists, the professional association of British journalists, from 1963 to 1964 .

In 1967 he succeeded William Haley as editor of The Times newspaper and held this position for fourteen years until he was replaced by Harold Evans in 1981. Between 1968 and 1981 he also served as a member of the executive board of Times Newspapers Ltd. as well as at the same time as director of The Times and was most recently also director of Times Newspapers Ltd. from 1978 and 1981. As editor of the Times, Rees-Mogg criticized in 1967 in a highly regarded editorial entitled “ Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel? ” ( “ Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel ? ” , Loosely translated:“ Who shoots sparrows with cannons? ”) The crackdown on the judiciary in a drug case against Mick Jagger and Keith Richards after a raid on Richard's Redlands country house in Sussex on 11./12. February 1967. While the two front men of the Rolling Stones initially threatened several years' imprisonment, the change in public opinion following the editorial meant that they were only sentenced to fines.

After finishing these activities, Rees-Mogg, who was also High Sheriff of Somerset in 1978, was beaten to a Knight Bachelor degree in 1981 and since then has had the suffix "Sir".

Manager and House of Lords

After leaving The Times , Sir William Rees-Mogg took on numerous management positions in the private sector , including serving as a board member of the General Electric Company (GEC plc) from 1981 to 1997 and vice-chairman of the BBC Board of Governors from 1981 to 1986 . At the same time he was appointed Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1982 as the successor to the former Health Minister Kenneth Robinson and held this position until he was replaced by Peter Palumbo in 1988. Between 1983 and 1984 he was also President of the English Association, the works to promote the English language and literature .

Rees-Mogg, who since 1983 CEO of the publishing house Pickering & Chatto Publishers Ltd. was, was also chairman of the board of Sidgwick & Jackson (an imprint of Macmillan Publishers) from 1985 to 1988 and a board member of the investment company M&G from 1987 to 1994 .

By a letters patent dated August 8, 1988, he was raised to the nobility as a life peer with the title Baron Rees-Mogg , of Hinton Blewitt in the County of Avon . Shortly after its introduction was carried out ( Introduction ) as a member of the House of Lords . In the upper house, he initially belonged to the conservative Tories faction , but later switched to the group of so-called crossbenchers .

He was also chairman of the council for broadcasting standards between 1988 and 1993 and chairman of the board of the publishing house Sinclair-Stevenson Ltd. from 1989 to 1992. Lord Rees-Mogg, who since 1992 as a columnist for and journalistic again The Times became active and was 1992-2009 President of Thorney Iceland Society was also 1993 to 1998 CEO of IBC Group plc and between 1993 and 2005 on the board of The Private Bank and Trust Co . He has also been CEO of Fleet Street Publications Ltd. since 1995. and from 1996 to 1999 board member of Value Realization Trust plc. After all, he was a columnist for the weekly Mail on Sunday between 2004 and 2011 .

Publications

  • The Reigning Error: The Crisis of World Inflation (1974)
  • To Humbler Heaven (1977)
  • Blood in the Streets (co-author Jim Davidson, 1987)
  • The Great Reckoning (co-author Jim Davidson, 1991)
  • Picnics on Vesuvius (1992)
  • The Sovereign Individual (co-author Jim Davidson, 1997)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/dec/29/william-rees-mogg-times-editor-dies
personal data
SURNAME Rees-Mogg, William, Baron Rees-Mogg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sir William Rees-Mogg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician, journalist and manager
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Bristol , England
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 2012