James Fawcett

Sir James Edmund Sandford Fawcett (16 April 1913 – 24 June 1991) was a British barrister. He was a member of the European Commission for Human Rights from 1962 to 1984, and its president from 1972 to 1981, and was knighted in 1984. He is a grandfather of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Childhood and education Fawcett was born in Wallingford, which was then in Berkshire. He was the son of Joseph Fawcett, a clergyman in the Church of England from a family of old Yorkshire gentry (Fawcett of Sandford Hall), and Edith ( Scattergood).

He was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford and at Rugby School, and then read classics at New College, Oxford. and served as the torpedo officer of a destroyer. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1942 for sinking an Italian destroyer. and took silk to become a Queen's Counsel in 1985. They had met many years before, while both pupils at the Dragon School. They had one son, the journalist and author Edmund Fawcett, and four daughters. One of their daughters was the artist Charlotte Johnson Wahl, mother of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the journalist Rachel Johnson, former government minister and life peer Jo Johnson, and the entrepreneur Leo Johnson. He enjoyed astronomy and played the piano.

He died at Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford after suffering a stroke, survived by his wife and five children.