Peter Rawlinson, Baron Rawlinson of Ewell

Peter Anthony Grayson Rawlinson, Baron Rawlinson of Ewell, (26 June 1919 – 28 June 2006) was an English barrister, Conservative Party politician and author. He served as Member of Parliament for Epsom for 23 years, from 1955 to 1978, and held the offices of Solicitor General (1962–1964) and Attorney General for England and Wales (1970–1974) and for Northern Ireland (1972–1974). Had he been appointed Lord Chancellor, as seemed likely during the mid-1970s, he would have been the first Roman Catholic to hold that position since Thomas More in 1532.

Early life Peter Anthony Grayson Rawlinson was born in Oxton, within Birkenhead, on 26 June 1919; he grew up in Sussex . He was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel A. R. Rawlinson OBE, a figure in military intelligence and a screenwriter. He was educated by Benedictine monks at Downside, near Bath, Somerset. He read law at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he joined the Cambridge Footlights. He was later elected as an Honorary Fellow of his college in 1981. He was Recorder of Salisbury from 1961 to 1962, and Recorder of Kingston upon Thames from 1975 to 2002. He was Leader of the Western Circuit from 1975 to 1982.

Political career A member of the Conservative Party, he stood as a Parliamentary candidate for Hackney South in the 1951 general election, losing in a landslide to the Labour incumbent, Herbert Butler. and held the seat until it was abolished at the February 1974 general election. He was re-elected for the new Epsom and Ewell seat, which he held until his ennoblement in 1978.

He was appointed Solicitor-General by Harold Macmillan in June 1962, following the Night of the Long Knives, receiving the customary knighthood, and served through the prosecution of the spy John Vassall (and subsequent resignation of a junior minister, Tam Galbraith) and the Profumo affair, in which his offer to resign was declined. and remained on the front benches in opposition, after the government lost the 1964 general election, but returned to the back benches after unsuccessfully supporting Reginald Maudling as new party leader. From the back benches, he led the opposition to the abolition of the death penalty. He served as Attorney General during the government of Edward Heath, from 1970 to 1974. Unusually, he conducted many prosecutions in person, including that of the Hosein brothers for kidnapping and murdering Muriel McKay (whom they had mistaken for Rupert Murdoch's wife).

He appeared before the House of Lords, arguing that The Times was in contempt of court in publishing details of the cases involving thalidomide, which drew the ire, in particular, of Bernard Levin, who wrote that he appeared to want the law to be administered in private. He also prosecuted IRA members for bombings in London and Aldershot. In 1972, when the Stormont Parliament was suspended, he also became Attorney General for Northern Ireland, and so was called to the bar and became a QC in Northern Ireland that year. He was a target of the Angry Brigade, which attempted to bomb his house several times.

Retirement He retired from the House of Commons in 1978, and was created a life peer on 17 April 1978 as Baron Rawlinson of Ewell, of Ewell in the County of Surrey. He harboured hopes of being appointed Lord Chancellor or Lord Chief Justice (the law having been changed in 1974 to permit a Roman Catholic to take the former position, widely seen at the time as a measure to permit Rawlinson to take the job) but his politics diverged from those of the new Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher, and he was never offered either position. In the Lords, he supported restrictions on abortion and divorce. He voted against the introduction of conditional fees in 1990.

He was a member of White's and the Marylebone Cricket Club, the vice-president of the Royal Automobile Club, and president of the Friends of London Oratory from 1980 to 1995. He was also a director of Daily Telegraph plc.

Rawlinson died on 28 June 2006, at the age of 87, near Avignon, France, where he was on holiday.

Publications Sources: War Poems and Poetry 1943 Public Duty and Personal Faith - the example of Thomas More 1978 A Price Too High (autobiography) 1989 The Jesuit Factor 1990 The Colombia Syndicate (novel) 1991 Hatred and Contempt (novel) 1992 His Brother's Keeper (novel) 1993 Indictment for Murder (novel) 1994 The Caverel Claim (novel) 1998 The Richmond Diary (novel) 2001 A Relic of War (novel) 2004