[4] His father, Ralph Lawson (1904–1982), was the owner of a tea-trading firm in the City of London, while his mother, Joan Elizabeth (née Davis, died 1998), was also from a prosperous family of stockbrokers.

[1] Lawson was educated at Westminster School in London (following in his father's footsteps),[8] and won a mathematics scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford,[1][9] where he gained a first-class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

[10] For two years from 1954, Lawson carried out his National Service as a Royal Navy officer, during which time he commanded the fast-patrol boat HMS Gay Charger.

[1][11] Having been turned down for a career at the Foreign Office, Lawson joined the Financial Times as a journalist in 1956, subsequently writing the Lex column.

[1] In 1963, Lawson was recruited by Conservative Central Office to assist with speech-writing for prime ministers Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home in the lead-up to the 1964 general election.

[20] [A] mixture of free markets, financial discipline, firm control over public expenditure, tax cuts, nationalism, "Victorian values" (of the Samuel Smiles self-help variety), privatisation and a dash of populism.

[22][23] During these two years, Lawson's public image remained low-key, but from the 1986 budget (in which he resumed the reduction of the standard rate of personal income tax from the 30 per cent rate to which it had been lowered in Howe's 1979 budget), his stock rose as unemployment began to fall from the middle of 1986 (employment growth having resumed over three years earlier).

In an interview in 2010, Lawson said that an unintended consequence of the Big Bang and the associated end of the separation that had existed between merchant and retail banking was the 2008 financial crisis.

][29] Critics of Lawson assert that a combination of the abandonment of monetarism, the adoption of a de facto exchange-rate target of 3 Deutsche Marks to the pound, and excessive fiscal laxity (in particular the 1988 budget) unleashed an inflationary spiral.

[40] After a further year in office in these circumstances, Lawson felt that public criticism from Walters (who favoured a floating exchange rate) was making his job impossible and he resigned.

[12][47] In 1996, Lawson appeared on the BBC satirical and topical quiz show Have I Got News for You, in which he secured his team a last-minute victory.

[51][52][53] During the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, it was reported that Lawson claimed £16,000 in overnight allowances by registering his farmhouse in Gascony as his main residence.

[56] Lawson was involved with the climate change denial movement and believed that the impact of man-made global warming had been exaggerated.

[57] In 2004, along with six others, Lawson wrote a letter to The Times opposing the Kyoto Protocol and claiming that there were substantial scientific uncertainties surrounding climate change.

[59] The report cited a mismatch between the economic costs and benefits of climate policy and also criticised the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets set in the Kyoto Protocol.

Lawson's lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) think tank, published 1 November 2006, opposed the Stern Review and advocated adaptation to changes in global climate rather than reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

[64] On 23 November 2009, Lawson became chairman of a new think tank, The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF),[12][65] a registered education charity,[66] involved in promoting climate change denial.

[57] In 2011, Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute said that the GWPF was "spreading errors" and "the 'facts'" Lawson "repeats are demonstrably inaccurate".

[67] Ward also criticised Lawson for repeating in a 2010 BBC radio debate that Antarctic ice volumes were unchanged even after his error was highlighted by his opponent, Professor Kevin Anderson.

[68][69] In a BBC Radio interview in August 2017, Lawson claimed that "official figures" showed "average world temperature has slightly declined" over the preceding decade and that experts in the IPCC found no increase in extreme weather events.

In a follow-up programme on the BBC's presentation of these claims, Peter A. Stott of the Met Office said Lawson was wrong on both points.

[70] Lawson was a critic of David Cameron's coalition government economic policy, describing spending cuts consultation plans as a "PR ploy".