DAWSON, GEORGE GEOFFREY

born Oct. 25, 1874, Skipton-in-Craven, Yorkshire, Eng. died Nov. 7, 1944, London original name George Geoffrey Robinson English journalist, editor of the Times from 1912 to 1919 and from 1923 until his retirement in 1941. His name was originally Robinson, but he changed it by deed poll in 1917, following an inheritance. Educated at Eton and at Magdalen College, Oxford, and elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1898, he entered the civil service and went to South Africa (1901) as private secretary to Lord Milner, then high commissioner. He became a journalist almost by accident, when Milner persuaded the owners of the Johannesburg Star to appoint him editor, to ensure continued support for the Milner policy after Milner's return to England. Dawson became Johannesburg correspondent of the Times and by his dispatches attracted the personal interest of Lord Northcliffe, who in 1912 made him editor. By 1919, however, Northcliffe's increasing determination to run the paper as an instrument of his personal policy led to a break, and Dawson agreed to go. He was succeeded by Henry Wickham Steed, but in 1923, after Northcliffe's death (1922), when John Jacob Astor (later Lord Astor) became chief proprietor, Dawson was invited to return, on terms that gave him authority over editorial policy. As editor of the Times Dawson exercised great influence on affairs for more than a quarter of a century. Although he had quarreled with Northcliffe for doing the same thing, he made the Times the instrument of his personal policy. A close intimate in turn of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, he was a leader in the group connected with the quarterly magazine Round Table, which sought to influence national policies by intimate and private exchanges with leading statesmen; he saw himself as the secretary-general of the Establishment. A firm believer in appeasement, he became, both through the Times and in personal relations with ministers, one of the chief instruments of the policy that reached its climax with the Munich Agreement (1938), which gave in to Adolf Hitler's demands for the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.