Mark Lawson
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| Mark Lawson | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 April 1962 |
| Occupation | Journalist, author, broadcaster |
| Nationality | British |
Mark Gerard Lawson (born 11 April 1962) is an English journalist, broadcaster and author.
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[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 to 1986. 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 16 December, which marked the end of his association with the format. In 2004, Lawson made a documentary for BBC Four called The Truth About Sixties TV, criticising what he called "golden ageists" who, he claimed, 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 appearing as himself in the series 1 episode 2, Pope Idol, 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" because of 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".
Since 2006, he has hosted a number of in-depth, one-to-one interviews for BBC Four, entitled Mark Lawson Talks to... .
[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
- ^ Book Review of "The Bedside Years: The Best Writing from The Guardian, 1951-2000", New Statesman, 28 January 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'
