Mark Lawson

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mark Gerard Lawson (born April 11, 1962) is an English journalist, broadcaster and author.

[edit] Life and career

Lawson was educated at St Columba's College in St Albans and took a degree in English at University College London, where one of his lecturers was John Sutherland.

Lawson has been a freelance contributor to numerous publications since 1984, beginning on The Universe in that year, and for The Times from 1984-86. He has written a column for The Guardian since 1995, having previously written for The Independent (1986-95), and has twice been TV Critic of the Year as well as winning many other journalism awards. His Guardian journalism has not been universally admired though. A former colleague Richard Gott, who chose to resign in an expenses scandal, has commented that the "prevalence of the bland and the obsequious" on The Guardian is typified by Lawson's "embedded presence". ^[1]

Lawson presented The Late Show on BBC2 in the 1990s and presented its offshoot The Late Review (later Sunday Review and from 2000 Newsnight Review) until the 2005 'review of the year' edition of Newsnight Review, broadcast on December 16, which marked the end of Lawson's association with the format. In 2004, Lawson made a documentary for BBC Four called The Truth About Sixties TV, criticising what he calls "golden ageists" who, he claims, have a rose-tinted view of television's past.

Mark Lawson is one of the regular presenters of BBC Radio 4's daily arts programme, Front Row. He has written several radio plays for the network, including St Graham and St Evelyn (2003) on the friendship between the Catholic novelists Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh and The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs (2005) on Mary Whitehouse's campaign against the Howard Brenton play The Romans in Britain. He has also written episodes of the television version of the BBC sitcom Absolute Power, and is one of many celebrities impersonated by the Dead Ringers team, referred to as "Britain's brainiest potato" and "the thinking woman's potato" due to his baldness. In 2002, Viz ran a spoof of his Newsnight Review programme, featuring Mr. Lawson engaged in a desperate search for hard-core pornography, entitled "The Artful Podger".

In 2006, he hosted a number of in-depth, one-to-one interviews for BBC Four, titled 'Mark Lawson interviews...'. His guests included, Terry Gilliam, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Armando Iannucci and Iain Banks. In 2008, he resumed a similar format, also on BBC Four, with 'Mark Lawson talks to...', where his guests included, Russell T Davies, Barry Cryer and George Cole.

[edit] Bibliography

• Bloody Margaret: Three Political Fantasies (Picador, 1991) ISBN 0-330-32386-5
• The Battle for Room Service: Journeys to All the Safe Places (Picador, 1993) ISBN 0-330-32384-9
• Idlewild (Picador, 1995) ISBN 0-330-34111-1
• Going Out Live (Picador, 2001) ISBN 0-330-48860-0
• Enough Is Enough (Picador, 2005) ISBN 0-330-43803-4

[edit] References

1. ^ Book Review of "The Bedside Years: The Best Writing from The Guardian, 1951-2000", New Statesman, January 28, 2002

[edit] External links

• Guardian columns by Mark Lawson
• "My life as a Catholic Jew" in which Lawson refers to his Wikipedia biography
• BBC Radio 4 profile
• Open Directory Project - Mark Lawson
• Critical look at Lawson's radio documentary 'Sit Trag'