Lilias Margaret Frances, Countess Bathurst (née Borthwick, 12 October 1871 – 30 December 1965) was a British newspaper publisher who owned The Morning Post.

Her father, Algernon Borthwick, 1st Baron Glenesk, owned the paper and passed control to her upon his death in 1908.

She led the paper as the only female owner of a major newspaper in the world, reorienting it to focus on political and diplomatic affairs.

The paper continued to be successful and respected under her ownership; it was considered an organ of the Conservative Party and contributed to the fall of Arthur Balfour and David Lloyd George from power.

Under her ownership, the paper was also known for its far-right stance, which largely reflected her own views, including expressing opinions that were anti-semitic, imperialist, and militaristic.

Lord Northcliffe, one of Lady Bathurst's competitors and the owner of The Times, wrote that she was "the most powerful woman in England, without exception other than royalty".

[2] She lived with her husband, a lieutenant-colonel in the 4th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment,[3] on Saint Helena during the Second Boer War as he was in command of the garrison on the island.

[4] The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) wrote that Borthwick considered her main principles to be "loyalty to the crown, to the church, and to every cause which was honourable and right".

[2] Under her ownership, The Morning Post was imperialist, protectionist, militaristic, anti-semitic, and opposed Home Rule for Ireland, socialism, women's suffrage and communism.

[22]In response to the perceived military deficiency of the United Kingdom and Germany's successful test of a Zeppelin, The Morning Post announced the creation of a National Airship Fund on 21 June 1909.

In August, it was revealed that the Daily Mail had offered to pay for a hangar while an airship from Clément-Bayard was shipped to England.

The airship commissioned by The Morning Post was damaged when it arrived in England ten days after the Clément-Bayard No.2, its hangar was too small, and it crashed on its first test flight.

[2] Shortly after the war began, she temporarily stopped taking a salary from the paper while it was in dire financial straits.

[30] In 1918 Gwynne and Charles à Court Repington, the war correspondent for The Morning Post during the conflict, were fined $500 each for publishing an article that criticised the Lloyd George ministry.

[31] In July 1920, The Morning Post published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination, with no comments.

When David Lloyd George fell from power in late 1922, Hayden Church for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate wrote that "with the exception of Andrew Bonar Law himself, and perhaps not even excepting the present Prime Minister, no single individual played a greater part in precipitating the crisis that drove David Lloyd George from office than did Lady Bathurst through her famous journal, the 'Morning Post'".

After August 1922, the paper's finances were continually overdrawn, and Lady Bathurst herself was in increasingly poor financial condition.

[34] Coupled with a dramatic fall in circulation,[2] in December 1922 she decided to sell the paper, assigning her son Allen Bathurst, Lord Apsley, to handle the negotiations.