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George Geoffrey Dawson (October 25, 1874, Skipton-in-Craven, Yorkshire - November 7, 1944, London) was editor of The Times from 1912 to 1919 and again from 1923 until 1941. His original last name was Robinson, but he changed it in 1917.
Dawson was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford, and was elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He chose a career in civil service in 1898 and became private secretary to Lord Milner, high commissioner in South Africa, in 1901. Milner needed to ensure the support of the local newspapers after his return to England, so he persuaded the owners of the Johannesburg Star to appoint Dawson as the paper's editor. He parlayed this post into a position as the Johannesburg correspondent of the Times, and attracted the attention of Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Times, who appointed him editor of the paper in 1912. Dawson was unhappy, however, with the way that Northcliffe used the paper as an instrument to further his own personal political agenda and broke with him, stepping down as editor in 1919. Dawson returned to the post in 1923 after Lord Northcliffe's death.
In his second stint as editor, Dawson began to use the paper in the same manner as Lord Northcliffe had, using the paper to promote his own agenda. He also became a leader of a group of journalists that sought to influence national policy by private correspondence with leading statesmen and was close to both Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. He was a prominent proponent and supporter of appeasement policies after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and is considered a major figure in the events that led up to the Munich agreement in 1938. He retired in 1941.
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