William Rees-Mogg

William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg (14 July 1928Template:Spaced ndash29 December 2012) was a British newspaper journalist who was Editor of The Times from 1967 to 1981. In the late 1970s, he served as High Sheriff of Somerset, and in the 1980s was Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain and Vice-Chairman of the BBC's Board of Governors. He was the father of the politicians Jacob and Annunziata Rees-Mogg.

Early life

William Rees-Mogg was born in 1928 in Bristol, England. He was the son of Edmund Fletcher Rees-Mogg (1889–1962) of Cholwell House<ref>Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, pp.1610–1611, pedigree of "Rees-Mogg of Cholwell", p.1611</ref> in the parish of Cameley in Somerset, an Anglican, and his Irish American Catholic wife, Beatrice Warren, a daughter of Daniel Warren of New York.<ref>Burke, 1937, p.1611</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> William Rees-Mogg was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

He was educated at Clifton College Preparatory School in Bristol and Charterhouse in Godalming, where he was Head of School.<ref name="this is bath">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Not yet eighteen, Rees-Mogg went up to Balliol College, Oxford, as a Brackenbury Scholar to read history in January 1946 as a place had fallen temporarily vacant. By the end of the Trinity (summer) term, he had been elected to the library committee (the junior committee) of the Oxford Union Society and was due to be an officer of the Oxford University Conservative Association under Margaret Roberts (the future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), President for Michaelmas (autumn) Term 1946.<ref name="Rees-Mogg 2011, pp75-81">Rees-Mogg 2011, pp75-81.</ref>

However, having spent two terms at Oxford he did not return in October. He later wrote that he had been forced to give up his place to a disabled ex-serviceman. From 1946 to 1948, beginning with an exceptionally bitter winter, he did his National Service in the Royal Air Force education department rising to the rank of sergeant. His duties included teaching illiterate recruits to read and write, and his reference from his commanding officer stated that he was competent to perform simple tasks under supervision.<ref name="Rees-Mogg 2011, pp75-81"/>

He returned to Oxford to complete his degree,<ref>presumably in April 1949 to complete the nine terms of residence normally required for a BA, although his memoirs do not give the exact date</ref> and became President of Oxford University Conservative Association in Michaelmas Term 1950 and President of the Oxford Union in Trinity term, 1951.<ref name="Rees-Mogg 2011, pp75-81"/><ref name="Larman review">Template:Cite news</ref> He graduated that term with a second-class degree.<ref name="Rees-Mogg 2011, pp75-81"/>

Career

Rees-Mogg began his career in journalism in London at the Financial Times in 1952, becoming chief leader writer in 1955 and, in addition, assistant editor in 1957.<ref name="Byrne">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Griffiths">Template:Cite book </ref> During this period 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,<ref name="Dennen's review"/> as he did in the subsequent general election by a similar margin.

He moved to The Sunday Times in 1960, later becoming its Deputy Editor from 1964<ref name="Griffiths"/> where he wrote "A Captain's Innings",<ref name=Budden>Template:Cite news</ref> which many believe convinced Alec Douglas-Home to resign as Tory leader, making way for Edward Heath, in July 1965.<ref name="Dennen's review">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Rees-Mogg was editor of The Times from 1967 to 1981. In a 1967 editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?",Template:Efn<ref name=Budden/> he criticised the severity of the custodial sentence for Mick Jagger on a drugs offence.<ref name="Bates">Template:Cite news</ref> With colleagues, he attempted a buyout of Times Group Newspapers in 1981 to stop its sale by the Thomson Organisation to Rupert Murdoch, but was unsuccessful.<ref name="Telegraph">Template:Cite news</ref> Murdoch replaced him as editor with Harold Evans. Rees-Mogg wrote a comment column for The Independent from its foundation in the autumn of 1986 until near the end of 1992,<ref name="Rees-Mogg @ The Independent">Template:Cite news</ref> when he rejoined The Times,<ref name="Debrett's">Template:Cite web</ref> where he remained a columnist until shortly before his death. In his Memoirs, published in 2011, he wrote of Murdoch: "Looking back, he has been an excellent proprietor for the Times, but also for Fleet Street."<ref name="Preston review">Template:Cite news</ref>

Rees-Mogg was 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,<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> he was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1981 Birthday Honours<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> and knighted by Elizabeth II in an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 3 November 1981.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> In the 1988 Birthday Honours, Rees-Mogg was made a life peer<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> on 8 August that year as Baron Rees-Mogg, of Hinton Blewitt in the County of Avon,<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> and sat in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher, having twice attempted to become a Conservative MP in the 1950s.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was a member of the European Reform Forum. The University of Bath awarded him an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Laws) in 1977.<ref name="Bath degree">Template:Cite web</ref>

He co-authored, with James Dale Davidson, three books on the general topic of financial investment and the future of capitalism: Blood in the Streets, The Great Reckoning, and The Sovereign Individual. Published in 1997, The Sovereign Individual argues that in an internet age the nation state will become outmoded, and an era of the individual will develop. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal, stated in 2014 that The Sovereign Individual was the most influential book he had read.<ref name=guardian-20181109>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=irishtimes-19970512>Template:Cite news</ref> The Sovereign Individual has had a strong influence on neoreactionary (NRx) politics.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Writing in The Times in 2001, Lord Rees-Mogg, who had 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. By now his liberal attitude to drugs policy had led to his being mocked as "Mogadon Man" by Private Eye.<ref name="Bates"/> The magazine later referred to him as "Mystic Mogg" (a pun on "Mystic Meg", a tabloid astrologer) because of the perception that his economic and political predictions were ultimately found to be inaccurate.<ref name="Telegraph"/><ref name="Prints of darkness">Template:Cite news</ref>

Rees-Mogg served as the chairman of the London publishing firm Pickering & Chatto Publishers and of NewsMax Media and wrote a weekly column for The Mail on Sunday.<ref name=independent-20121231>Template:Cite news</ref> He also collected 18th-century literature.<ref>William Rees-Mogg "Contemporary Collectors: 18th Century Literature." The Book Collector 10 4 (autumn) 423–434.</ref>

Personal life

Rees-Mogg and his wife Gillian Shakespeare Morris (Template:Born in) married in 1962. She is the daughter of Thomas Richard Morris, who was a lorry driver and later a car salesman.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Rees-Mogg became a Conservative councillor and Mayor in the Borough of St Pancras, and later councillor for the Kings Cross ward of the London Borough of Camden. He was also a JP.

They had five children. They are:

• The Honorable Emma Beatrice Rees-Mogg (born 1962),<ref name="auto">Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes. Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003.</ref> who married David William Hilton Craigie in 1990. The couple have four children. She is a novelist under the name Emma Craigie.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• The Honorable Charlotte Louise Rees-Mogg (born 1964)<ref name="auto"/>
• The Honorable Thomas Fletcher Rees-Mogg (born 1966), who married Modwenna Northcote in 1996. The couple have four children.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="auto"/>
• The Right Honorable Sir Jacob William Rees-Mogg (born 24 May 1969), who was elected Conservative MP for the new constituency of North East Somerset in 2010, serving until 2024, after having stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the 1997 and 2001 general elections (in Central Fife and The Wrekin respectively).<ref name="Budden" /> He married Helena de Chair in 2007. The couple have six children.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In July 2019, he was appointed Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council in the Johnson ministry.
• The Honorable Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg (born 25 March 1979), who 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. She was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party in 2019. She is married to Matthew Glanville and has two children.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Rees-Mogg, a Roman Catholic, argued that the image of an ultra-conservative papacy is false and that the Vatican must overhaul its PR machine (as of 2009).<ref name="Rees-Mogg on Pope's Message">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1964, Rees-Mogg purchased Ston Easton Park near Bath, Somerset, the former home of the Hippisley family. The house had been threatened with demolition, and Rees-Mogg partially restored it.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He sold the house to the Smedley family in 1978.

Death

Afflicted by oesophageal cancer, he became seriously ill just before Christmas 2012, and died in London on 29 December at the age of 84.<ref name="The Times obit">Template:Cite news</ref> Rees-Mogg's funeral was held at Westminster Cathedral on 9 January 2013,<ref name="O'Carroll ">Template:Cite news</ref> with his body being buried in the graveyard of the Church of St James at Cameley in the county of Somerset.

Books

• The reigning error: The crisis of world inflation (1975)Template:Missing ISBN
• An Humbler Heaven (1977) Template:ISBN
• Blood in the Streets: Investment Profits in a World Gone Mad (1986, with James Dale Davidson) Template:ISBN<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• Picnics on Vesuvius: Steps towards the millennium (1992) Template:ISBN
• The Great Reckoning: How the World Will Change Before the Year 2000 (1992, with James Dale Davidson) Template:ISBN<ref name=mt>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
• The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age (1997, with James Dale Davidson) Template:ISBN

See also

• Self-ownership
• R v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, ex p Rees-Mogg

Sources

• Template:Cite book

External links

• Template:UK Peer links
• Profile at Bloomberg Businessweek
• Profile at LevelBusiness