Early Life
Lawson was born in 1932 to a wealthy family living at Hampstead. His father, Ralph Lawson (1904–1982), was the owner of a commodity-trading firm in the City of London, while his mother, Joan Elisa Davis, was also from a prosperous family of stockbrokers. His family is Jewish. His paternal-grandfather Gustav Leibson, a merchant from Mitau (now Jelgava in Latvia) changed his name from Leibson to Lawson after becoming a British Citizen in 1911.
Lawson was educated at Westminster School (following in his father's footsteps, also an Old Westminster) and Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a first class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, He carried out his military service as a Royal Navy officer – during which time he commanded a small torpedo boat. Lawson began his career as a financial journalist and progressed to the positions of City editor of The Sunday Telegraph in 1961 and editor of The Spectator (1966–1970).
Read more about this topic: Nigel Lawson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)