William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg (14 July 192829 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 Sir 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 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. 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.
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.
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.
He returned to Oxford to complete his degree, and became President of Oxford University Conservative Association in Michaelmas Term 1950 and President of the Oxford Union in Trinity term, 1951. He graduated that term with a second-class degree.
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. 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, 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 where he wrote "A Captain's Innings", which many believe convinced Alec Douglas-Home to resign as Tory leader, making way for Edward Heath, in July 1965.
Rees-Mogg was editor of The Times from 1967 to 1981. In a 1967 editorial entitled "Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?", he criticised the severity of the custodial sentence for Mick Jagger on a drugs offence. 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. 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, when he rejoined The Times, 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."
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, he was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 1981 Birthday Honours and knighted by Elizabeth II in an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 3 November 1981. In the 1988 Birthday Honours, Rees-Mogg was made a life peer on 8 August that year as Baron Rees-Mogg, of Hinton Blewett in the County of Avon, and sat in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher, having twice attempted to become a Conservative MP in the 1950s. He was a member of the European Reform Forum. The University of Bath awarded him an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Laws) in 1977.