William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg (b. July 14, 1928, Bristol, England) is a journalist and writer in the United Kingdom.
Life and career
He was educated at Charterhouse and Balliol College, Oxford. He was President of the Oxford Union in 1951.
Rees-Mogg began his journalism career at The Financial Times, before moving to The Sunday Times. 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 September 27, 1956, losing to Labour candidate Norman Pentland by 21,287 votes.
Rees-Mogg served as editor of The Times newspaper from 1967 to 1981, and still writes comment for the paper. In July 1967 Rees-Mogg wrote the famous editorial Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel? defending Mick Jagger following the Redlands arrests and attacking the UK laws on cannabis usage. He also was on the BBC's Board of Governors and a chairman of the Arts Council overseeing a major reform of the body halving the number of arts organisations receiving regular funding and reducing 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 Blewitt 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 author of The Sovereign Individual, The Great Reckoning, and Blood in the Streets, all three co-authored with James Dale Davidson.
Rees-Mogg's stand on drugs led to him being satirised by Private Eye as "Mogadon Man", who also mock the perceived inaccuracy of his predictions by referring to him as "Mystic Mogg".
His youngest daughter, the Honourable Annunziata Rees-Mogg, stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the 2005 general election. His son, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has also stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Conservative party in the 1997 and 2001 general elections.
Lord Rees-Mogg is the Chairman of The Zurich Club and a regular contributor to 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. His views were not borne out by the 2001 election results.
In the media
Rees-Mogg was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!.
See also
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