Sir William Hartley Hume ShawcrossCVO (born 28 May 1946) is a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster. He is the incumbentCommissioner for Public Appointments. From 2012 to 2018 he chaired theCharity Commission for England and Wales.

Shawcross has written and lectured on issues of international policy,geopolitics,Southeast Asia andrefugees, as well as the British royal family. He has written for a number of publications, includingTime,Newsweek,International Herald Tribune,The Spectator,The Washington Post andRolling Stone,^[2] in addition to writing numerous books on international topics: thePrague Spring, theVietnam War, theIranian Revolution, theIraq War,foreign assistance,humanitarian intervention, and theUnited Nations. His worksSideshow (1979) andThe Quality of Mercy (1984) were amongThe New York Times Book Review's books of the year.^[3][4]

The eldest of three children, William Shawcross was born on 28 May 1946 in Sussex, to the barristerHartley Shawcross and his second wife Joan Mather. At the time of his birth, his father was theLabourMP forSt Helens, theAttorney General for England and Wales, the first British principal delegate to theUnited Nations, and theChief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at theNuremberg trials. His mother died in a riding accident on theSussex Downs in 1974. His father died at the age of 101 in 2003.

Shawcross was educated atSt Aubyns Preparatory School inRottingdean, followed byEton College, andUniversity College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1968.^[5] After leaving Oxford, he attendedSaint Martin's School of Art to study sculpture and became a freelance researcher forThe Sunday Times.^[6] Unable to obtain a permanent position at the newspaper, he wrote his first book, a biography of theCzechoslovakian leaderAlexander Dubček, which was published in 1970.^[7]

After leaving Oxford, Shawcross worked as a journalist forThe Sunday Times, and contributed to a book by its journalists onWatergate.^[5]

In 1973, as a Congressional Fellow of theAmerican Political Science Association, Shawcross worked in Washington, DC, on the staffs of SenatorEdward M. Kennedy and RepresentativeLes Aspin.^[5]

From 1986 to 1996 Shawcross was Chairman ofARTICLE 19, the international centre on censorship.

From 1997 to 2002, he was a Member of the Council of theDisasters Emergency Committee, and a board member of theInternational Crisis Group from 1995 to 2005.^[8]

Shawcross was appointed a member of theUN High Commissioner for Refugees's Informal Advisory Group in 1995, a post he held until 2000.

From 1997 to 2003, he was a member of theBBC World Service Advisory Council.

In 2008, he became a Patron of theWiener Library, and in 2011 he joined the board of theAnglo-Israel Association and was appointed to the board of theHenry Jackson Society.

Shawcross was appointed to the chairmanship of theCharity Commission for England and Wales on 1 October 2012, serving 2 three-year terms as its chairman until February 2018.^[9][10] His appointment was controversially extended in 2015; a decision that was criticised as "rushed" for "political reasons" by his opponents.^[11] A January 2018 assessment of his tenure concluded that he "won praise from government but heavy criticism from within the charity sector."^[12]

In March 2019, he was named by the UK Foreign Secretary as Special Representative on UK victims of Qadhafi-sponsored IRA terrorism.^[13] In March 2020, he delivered his report to the Foreign Secretary but, controversially, it was not made public.^[14][15]

In January 2021, the British government appointed Shawcross to head the review of its anti-radicalisation programme,Prevent.Amnesty International and 16 other human rights and community organisations announced they would boycott the review in protest at the appointment of William Shawcross as its chairman as they feared a "whitewash" because of his perceived anti-Muslim political positions.^[16]

Shawcross was appointed theCommissioner for Public Appointments in September 2021.^[17]

As commissioner, on 24 January 2023 he opened an investigation into the appointment ofRichard Sharp to thechairmanship of theBBC amid allegations that the then-prime minister,Boris Johnson, had recommended Sharp's appointment after Sharp had helped secure a loan guarantee agreement for Johnson.^[18] Six days after beginning the investigation into Sharp's appointment, Shawcross wrote toJulian Knight, the chair of theDigital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, to recuse himself from its deliberations, disclosing that he had met Sharp "on previous occasions" which could give the impression of a prior conflict of interest. Shawcross announced that he would be handing his investigation to an "independent person" to complete while retaining the other regulatory powers of his office.^[19]

Shawcross's politics have been described as having moved to the right over the course of his life.^[8] His 1979 book onCambodia,Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, resulted in Shawcross's being "lauded by liberal intellectuals and America's East Coast elite."^[8] The US left continues to praise Shawcross's earlier work; for example, in September 2019,Sideshow was cited at length in an opinion piece inThe Intercept defending Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.^[20]

As an initial indicator of how his views were shifting, in his 1990 introduction to the revised edition of his 1970 biography ofAlexander Dubček, Shawcross wrote:

My own principal criticism [of his own 1970 book] is that I did not realize adequately that the experiment of humane Communism, or Socialism with a Human Face, was impossible, perhaps even a contradiction in terms. . . . The last twenty years have shown nothing so much as the catastrophic nature of Communism everywhere. Wherever Communism has triumphed—I think particularly of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—its consequences have been utterly disastrous.^[21]: 6

In 1992, he wrote an "admiring" biography ofRupert Murdoch.^[8] In 1994, about his 1970s journalism from Vietnam, in light of subsequent abuses by the governments of Cambodia,Vietnam, andLaos, Shawcross wrote:

I think I concentrated too easily on the corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese and their American allies, was too ignorant of the inhuman Hanoi regime, and far too willing to believe that a victory by the Communists would provide a better future.^[22]

Following theattacks of 11 September 2001, he supported the US invasion of Iraq.^[2]

His 2003 selection byBuckingham Palace to write the authorised biography of theQueen Mother was described as drawing "Shawcross into the bosom of the monarchy in a way rarely enjoyed by any layman", and the resulting book led to him being described as a "royalist writer."^[2][8] The biography was published in 2009, and a collection of letters followed in 2012. He is a pronounced royalist, who is frequently complimentary of theRoyal Family, for example in an April 2020 piece forThe Spectator onQueen Elizabeth II, titled "Thank God for the Queen":

"One happy result of the horrible virus is that it has prompted the Queen to give us not one but two statements of her faith in this country and in God. Together they demonstrate vividly the exquisite, strong but light touch of our almost timeless monarch."^[23]

In 2006, Shawcross warned of "a vastfifth column" ofMuslims in Europe who "wish to destroy us"; we should not shy away from labelling the problem "Islamicfascism".^[24]

In a 2010 article forNational Review Shawcross described Britain as a "mere piece of the bland but increasingly oppressive Bambiland of the E.U., promoting such PC global issues as gay rights (except in Muslim lands) and man-made climate change." He also criticised "postmodernism"; defining it as "disastrous creed that there is no objective truth and that everything is relative" and likened it to a form ofappeasement. In the same article, Shawcross described Labour's "'multicultural' ideology" as a "catastrophe" and implied that Labour's immigration policy was designed to "dilute Britishness".^[25]

In his 2012 bookJustice and the Enemy, Shawcross defended the use oftorture andwaterboarding atGuantánamo Bay as a natural "response to the most urgent problems" of terrorism.^[26]

In November 2018 he appeared to walk back his 1979 criticism ofHenry Kissinger inSideshow; in an argument that Kissinger should be allowed to speak atNew York University, Shawcross noted "regret" for the "tone" of his prior criticism of Kissinger, which he minimised as "a policy disagreement over Cambodia", as opposed to "a moral crusade", and he concluded that Kissinger "is an extraordinary man who deserves respect."^[27]

In November 2019 he came out in support ofBritain's exit from the European Union, on the basis of the EU's problematic nature and approach, writing inThe Spectator that "there are risks in proceeding withBrexit. But there are far greater risks in abandoning it."^[28]

The change over time in Shawcross's politics has been compared to the political shifts of his father Hartley Shawcross,Paul Johnson, andChristopher Hitchens.^[29][30] While noting speculation about other reasons for the shift, American journalistJames Traub speculated that "it's more instructive to consider the possibility that Shawcross has remained true to his principles, but that a morally driven foreign policy looks very different after 9/11 than it did before."^[31]

Shawcross's first published book was a biography ofAlexander Dubček, the leader ofCzechoslovakia during the 1968Prague Spring whose "socialism with a human face" briefly brought freedom into theSoviet Bloc. According to the introduction to the 1990 edition, the book's genesis was in Shawcross's travels to Czechoslovakia as a 22-year-old recent college graduate in 1968–69, when he witnessed the Prague Spring and its aftermath.^{[21]: 1–3} In April 1969, as his first assignment,The Times sent Shawcross to Prague to report on Dubcek's deposition from power, which led him to decide "I would like to write a book about Dubcek", and to spend several months in Czechoslovakia researching it.^{[21]: 3–5} The book concluded that Dubcek "was quite convinced that he had discovered in 1968 that for which philosophers and philanthropists have for centuries searched—the just society. He may have been right."^[21]: 206

The New York Times Book Review, in December 1971, namedDubcek among the year's "noteworthy titles", describing it in a June 1971 capsule review as: "Written less than a year after Alexander Dubcek's resignation, this biography of the Czech leader by a London journalist is an authoritative, first‐rate job."^[32][33]

Shawcross revised and reissuedDubcek in 1990 upon its subject's return to prominence and power during theVelvet Revolution, following two decades of rustication.

Shawcross next wrote "a political study of Hungarian politicianJános Kádár" who, like Dubcek, "tried to negotiate with Communist dogmas to create more humane regimes."^[29] In it, Shawcross argued that, following Kádár's 1956 betrayal of Hungarian PresidentImre Nagy, "Kadar worked to reunite Hungary and succeeded in making it one of the most advanced countries in theWarsaw Pact in both economic and democratic terms."^[29]

In his mostly-favourable review inThe Washington Post, Robert Dean, aCIA analyst, wrote that "Shawcross has succeeded admirably in conveying a sense of the atmosphere which has come to prevail in the wake of the reform, and how a cautious reformist ethos and economic success have in turn shaped cultural life, social policies, and the attitudes of youth."^[34] Dean thought that the book portrayed Kadar less well than it did Hungary: "One senses that Shawcross would have liked to have produced a biography of Kadar but was stymied by the incompleteness of information."^[34]

Sideshow is, at least in the United States, Shawcross's best known and most controversial book.^[35] To write it, Shawcross interviewed over 300 people and reviewed thousands of US Government documents, some classified Top Secret, obtained using theFreedom of Information Act.^[36][5]Sideshow exposed the secret bombing ofCambodia conducted by US PresidentRichard Nixon and his advisorHenry Kissinger, and argued that Nixon's and Kissinger's policy "led to the rise of theKhmer Rouge and the subsequent massacre of a third of Cambodia's population,"^[8][37][38] According to one summary,Sideshow

denounces the systematic destruction of Cambodia by the Nixon Administration as a consequence of the Vietnam War and for the sake of a mere strategic design. The study stresses how the decision to attack a neutral country was a patent violation of the American Constitution. As in his previous two books, Shawcross combines an interest in international policies with a private focus on the personal relationship between Nixon and Kissinger. The study argues that the President and his Secretary of State reproduced in their international relations the same pattern of falsehood that characterized their own personal association.^[29]

The book's penultimate, conclusory sentence — "Cambodia was not a mistake; it was a crime"^[39] — is frequently quoted; whenever Shawcross's lifetime of writing is reduced to one sentence, that's it.^{[36][37][40][41][42]}

Sideshow received high praise and awards. ThePulitzer Prize jury recommended a special citation for it in the 1980 awards based on its "extraordinary qualities", although it was ineligible for the prize because its author was not American; the Pulitzer board declined that recommendation, however.^[43]The New York Times Book Review selectedSideshow among its top 17 "Editor's Choice" books of 1979, describing it as an "indictment" of Kissinger and Nixon.^[3] It won theGeorge Polk Award in Journalism's Book Award for 1979.^[44] ColumnistAnthony Lewis wrote inThe New York Times,

I think it is the most interesting and the most important book on American foreign policy in many years. On more than foreign policy, really: on the American constitutional system. For it is a textbook — a gripping, factual textbook — on what can happen when the system is violated.^[45]

John Leonard ofThe New York Times wrote that in addition to being "meticulous[ly]" documented, "it has the sweep and the shadow of a spy novel as it portrays the surreal world of power, severed from morality, paranoid, feeding on itself."^[36]

Kissinger, who declined Shawcross's interview requests when the book was being written,^[27] vociferously denouncedSideshow, as did American conservatives. In an angry letter toThe Economist, Kissinger described the book as "obscene" and "absurd."^[46] Observing that bothSideshow and Kissinger's memoir,White House Years, were included amongThe New York Times Book Review's best books of 1979,Herbert Mitgang asked each author about the other's volume. Kissinger calledSideshow "a shoddy, outrageous work that is filled with inaccuracies," adding, "And you can quote me."^[47] Following the publication ofSideshow,Peter Rodman, an aide to Kissinger, concluded that Shawcross's work was "a fraud" and "a compendium of errors, sleight of hand, and egregious selectivity", according toR. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., who published Rodman's criticism in his conservative magazine,The American Spectator.^[48][49] Shawcross, in turn, described Rodman's critique as "a rotten piece of work" and wrote a response ("demonstrating the fallacies, if not the fraud, of almost all of Mr. Rodman's points"), whichThe American Spectator published, with Rodman's further reply.^[50][48] Shawcross included the entire exchange in later editions ofSideshow.^[27] Tyrrell proclaimedSideshow the "worst book of the year" in the Washington Post, as did his magazine.^[51][52] Shawcross later became friends with Tyrrell and Rodman. In 2007, Shawcross and Rodman co-wrote aNew York Times op-ed, referring to their past differences over Cambodia but jointly arguing against U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.^[49][27][53] When Rodman died in 2008, Shawcross was "much saddened", as he later wrote, and sent Tyrrell a note expressing his grief.^[27][49] And in 2011,The American Spectator ceremonially revoked its 1979 "worst book of the year" award, on grounds that subsequently "Shawcross has become increasingly sound" in his views, at a London lunch among Shawcross and Tyrrell.^[52]

The Quality of Mercy again addresses Cambodia, but as a critical assessment of the aid and relief efforts of governments, UN bodies, and international relief agencies following the suffering inflicted on that country by itsKhmer Rouge government and by its neighbour,Vietnam. Shawcross's book portrays, in the words of Colin Campbell'sNew York Times review, "a humanitarian outpouring that was shot through with misrepresentations, incompetence, callousness and shirking of principle."^[54] The book finds positives and negatives of each player, but overall, the United States, in particular the U.S. Embassy in Thailand and its Ambassador,Morton Abramowitz, "comes out looking pretty good. Vietnam appears to have been the main obstacle to the Cambodians' relief."^[55][56]

The Quality of Mercy has received less attention than some of Shawcross's other books, but is highly regarded by some critics, while also receiving negative criticism from others. The historian and Cambodia expertBen Kiernan, who was "Shawcross's interpreter for several weeks" when he was researching the book, wrote a long critical essay.^[57] The Australian journalistJohn Pilger—who is criticised inThe Quality of Mercy,^{[58]: 139–141} and the two men have a continuing history of public disagreements^[59]—reportedly attacked Shawcross in aNew Statesman review as a "born-again cold warrior."^[60] ButEd Vulliamy, inThe Guardian, called it "Shawcross's bravest, most complicated and astute work", commenting that "the little-knownQuality of Mercy examined and challenged deficiencies in the international aid programme to Cambodia, which lavished assistance on the remnants ofPol Pot's Khmer Rouge, perpetuating the violence."^[2] The editors ofThe New York Times Book Review included it among their fifteen "Editor's Choice" books, as the best books of 1984.^[4]The New York Times concluded, "This is a startling book and most of it is very persuasive." He stated that on most counts, "Mr. Shawcross's subtlety and lack of sanctimony are remarkable." He also considers it "noteworthy that a journalist who in the past attacked American policy so fiercely has, in this book, portrayed at least the United States Embassy inBangkok as one of the best informed and most decently efficient actors in the refugee drama."^[54] Human rights activistAryeh Neier, reviewingThe Quality of Mercy inThe New York Times Book Review, similarly stated that "a reader cannot help but be impressed by his apparent fairness" and called it "a splendid book that will have a profound impact."^[56] He concluded thatThe Quality of Mercy "may well be the best account we have of the politics of international charity."^[56]

The Quality of Mercy was republished in 1985 with an additional final chapter, "Report from Ethiopia—May 1985", describing relief effort in response to theEthiopian famine in light of the Cambodian experience.^{[58]: 431–451} Shawcross drew a number of lamentable parallels, for example that "in Ethiopia as well as Cambodia, humanitarian aid was being used by a Communist regime to underwrite war."^{[58]: 450–451} The essay concluded, "In neither Cambodia nor Ethiopia did the ordinary people for whom the aid was delivered benefit from it to the extent which had been intended and which they deserved. Instead aid was being used to prolong rather than to end the disaster."^[58]: 451

This book's US subtitle was "The Fate of an Ally;" its 1989 UK subtitle was "The Story of the Exile, Misadventures and Death of the Emperor."The Shah's Last Ride is, in the words of its prologue, "the story of a journey, the Shah's forlorn journey into exile and death, and of various elements of his rule—his relations with the British and Americans, his secret police,SAVAK, the CIA, oil, the arms trade. The tale of the fall and exile of the Shah is one which illustrates the nature of relationship between states and leaders. It is a story of loyalty and convenience."^[61]: 14 It retraces the odyssey ofthe last Shah ofIran after being driven into exile by theIranian Revolution, first toEgypt, and then in succession toMorocco,the Bahamas,Mexico,the United States,Panama, and finally back to Egypt, where he died.^[62] Shawcross traces his own interest in Iran to the 1960s: "Ardeshir Zahedi, the Shah's Ambassador to London, became a firm friend of my family then, and has remained so since."^[61]: 417 As a further family connection, Shawcross's father "was once President of theIran Society in Britain."^[61]: 419

Many reviewers praisedThe Shah's Last Ride for the high quality of its narrative and storytelling, with praise such as "a compelling, evenhanded, artful book, more like a novel than a history;"^{[63][64][65][66]} Much of what criticism the book received arose from its narrow focus. One Middle East expert,Daniel Pipes, wrote that Shawcross "has done his best to eke out the details of this sad, small tale. But this reader concludes that he has pretty much wasted his time, and Shawcross himself seems to know it."^[67] Another,Zalmay Khalilzad (later Republican-appointed U.S. Ambassador to, successively, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations), criticised the book for not highlighting theCarter administration's failures in its dealings with the Shah.^[66] A third Middle East expert,Fouad Ajami, criticised Shawcross for telling the Shah's story as a sympathetic (or at least pathetic) tale of "the woes of an ailing, old man, dying of cancer" rather than one of an oppressive dictator and his long, brutal reign.^[68] Ajami further criticised Shawcross's choice of sources from the Shah's circle, and his credulous attitude toward them. In a critique that may have foreshadowed Shawcross's later writing about another royal family, Ajami posited that Shawcross's sources, including the Shah's twin sister,Princess Ashraf, were able to work their royal charms to disarm his reportorial skepticism.^[68]

In a change from international affairs, Shawcross next wrote a biography ofRupert Murdoch. Its 1992 UK title wasRupert Murdoch: Ringmaster of the Information Circus; it was published in the US in 1993 asMurdoch: The Making of a Media Empire.New York Times reviewer Herbert Mitgang commented there was a "red flag" present: Shawcross had let Murdoch read a draft before publication, violating "an unwritten rule for the most esteemed American biographers."^[69] The punditAndrew Sullivan, inThe New York Times Book Review, describedMurdoch as "what a Murdoch paper would surely call a suck-up."^[70]

Despite the issues raised, Mitgang's review was generally positive, while Sullivan wrote that Shawcross, albeit "unwittingly", "achieved something very valuable", in "expos[ing] the banality of a highly sophisticated and successful businessman", and "plac[ing] the real issue behind the story of Mr. Murdoch's career—the nature of a democratic culture—away from the petty demonization of an entrepreneur and on the larger forces that have determined his fate."^[69][70]The Economist made a similar point in a more straightforward way: "Although this is a fine, superbly-researched and vivid book on the Murdoch enigma, the enigma remains."^[71]

The 1992 publication ofMurdoch raised a brief flurry in the literary world.The New Yorker, then edited byTina Brown, published a shortTalk of the Town piece byFrancis Wheen, wondering how "could Willie Shawcross, who made his name in the seventies withSideshow, an indignant expose of Henry Kissinger's destruction of Cambodia, become Murdoch's hagiographer?"^[72] David Cornwell, better known by hisnom de plumeJohn le Carré, wrote a responsive letter in defence of Shawcross, calling Wheen's essay "one of the ugliest pieces of partisan journalism that I have witnessed in a long life of writing."^[73] When Brown said she would only publish Cornwell's letter if he cut it to one paragraph, he released it to the press instead, and the contretemps drew much media attention.^{[29][74][75][76]}

Deliver Us From Evil overviews the work of theUnited Nations during the 1990s to ameliorate situations in many of the world's trouble spots of that decade, largely as seen through the eyes ofKofi Annan, whom Shawcross accompanied on his travels.^[77]

Reviews were mixed to negative. Some meted out limited praise: "highly readable, if at times repetitive and scattershot,"^[78] "admirably fair in his judgments,"^[77] and "thoughtful but inconclusive" as well as "a useful reality check for all those well-meaning people who clamor for the United Nations to do something."^[79]

At the most negative end of the spectrum, a capsule review inThe New Yorker concluded: "Shawcross's reporting here is often secondhand; his prose is dreary; and his thinking (which frequently takes refuge in anti-Americanism) is lazy. The result is an insult to the gravity of the issues he purports to address, and—worse—to the anguish of the world's politically endangered peoples."^[80] Shawcross's optimistic attitude "as a booster for the UN" was criticised as unwarranted by reviewers from left and right, with all arguing the UN has a long record of failures.^[80][77][78] His identifying Cambodia as a UN success story drew particular quibbles,^[79][81] while several found fault with the book's analytical conclusions (or, more precisely, its lack thereof).^[79][81]

Robert Kagan, reviewing it forCommentary, labelledDeliver Us From Evil "little more than an exercise in liberal handwringing."^[81]

New Zealand diplomat Terence O'Brien said it was excellent first-hand history which "is unlikely soon to be bettered", terming his book sharp and comprehensive. "Shawcross enjoys a reputation as a chronicler of the blemishes in modern international behaviour ... The response of the so-called international community to the continuing rash of internal conflict is subjected to clinical appraisal".^[82]

Like other Shawcross books,Allies was published under two different subtitles, in a 2003 hardback as "The U.S., Britain, and Europe in the Aftermath of the Iraq War", and in a 2005 paperback as "Why the West Had to Remove Saddam." The book has been described as a polemic, rather than a work of journalism, with some commentators observing that, unlike other books by Shawcross, it has no footnotes.^[31][30][83] One critic wrote of Shawcross as "a vocal supporter of PresidentGeorge W. Bush'sWar on Terror and praisesTony Blair's interventionist policies in Iraq andAfghanistan, writing off criticism of the two leaders as hysterical."^[29]

Regarding Shawcross's position inAllies compared to his prior positions, especially inSideshow, the reviewer inThe New York Times asked "What's going on here?" while the conservative U.S. journalsThe National Review andThe American Spectator were surprised and laudatory.^[31][84][85]The National Review wrote, "Shawcross has written an outstanding justification of the Anglo-American effort to driveSaddam Hussein from power. It is an exemplary piece of moral clarity and fine writing."^[84]

Justice and the Enemy considered theGeorge W. Bush administration's post-9/11 military commissions in light of theNuremberg trials. In it, according to the law professor and former U.S. Justice Department officialJack Goldsmith, Shawcross "provides a deeply sympathetic account of how" the Bush administration resolved "difficult choices and trade-offs in deciding how to bring justice to the perpetrators of 9/11."^[86]

The Economist's review ofJustice and the Enemy found the book lacked "original research onal-Qaeda", its Nuremberg comparisons unhelpful, and its author "keener to score points against all those who roundly condemn President George Bush's strategy" than to draw useful conclusions.^[87]The Independent described it as a "shameless justification of the policies of the Bush administration" in which "justice is a surreal concept totally subordinate to the "security" of the US".^[88]

In 1970, he married the writer and art criticMarina Warner; their son, born in 1977,Conrad, is an artist. The marriage ended in divorce in 1980.^[89]

Shawcross married Michal Levin in 1981.^[90] Their daughter,Eleanor, is a political advisor, working as director of theNumber 10 Policy Unit underRishi Sunak from 2022,^[91] and is married toSimon, The Lord Wolfson aConservativelife peer.^[92]

Shawcross married his third wife,Olga Polizzi, in 1993.^[90] They live in aGrade I listed Elizabethan mansion called Friston Place, atEast Dean, inEast Sussex.^[7][93]Alex Polizzi, thehotelier andtelevision presenter is his stepdaughter.

Shawcross was appointedCommander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in the2011 New Year Honours^[94] andknighted in the2023 Birthday Honours for public service.^[95]

He has lifelong ties toCornwall where he is a keen campaigner in the preservation and protection of local Conservation Areas. His campaign succeeded in obtainingGrade II listing forSt Mawes's historic and endangered sea wall.^[96]

In 2009, Shawcross signed a petition in support of film directorRoman Polanski, calling for his release after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland in relation to his1977 sexual abuse case^[97]

• Official website.
• William Shawcross onGOV.UK
• Official page asCommissioner for Public Appointments.
• William Shawcross onThe Guardian
• Biography of William Shawcross by theBritish Council.
• Profile forThe New Statesman (2003).
• Profile forThe Independent (2015).
• Profile forThe National (Scotland) (2022).

• 1946 births
• Living people
• British people of English descent
• People educated at St. Aubyns School
• People educated at Eton College
• Alumni of University College, Oxford
• Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order
• English biographers
• 20th-century British biographers
• 21st-century British biographers
• British male journalists
• Campaign Against Psychiatric Abuse
• Shawcross family
• British male biographers
• Forte family
• Sons of life peers
• Knights Bachelor

• CS1 errors: missing periodical
• CS1 errors: periodical ignored
• Pages containing links to subscription-only content
• Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y
• CS1 French-language sources (fr)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from October 2016
• CS1 maint: location missing publisher