Background
Dawson was born 25 October 1874, in Skipton-in-Craven, Yorkshire, the eldest child of George Robinson, a banker, and his wife Mary.
Dawson was born 25 October 1874, in Skipton-in-Craven, Yorkshire, the eldest child of George Robinson, a banker, and his wife Mary.
He attended Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He chose a career in civil service, entering in 1898 by open examination.
His original last name was Robinson, but he changed it in 1917. His academic career was distinguished. He took a First in Classical Moderations in 1895 and a First in Literae Humaniores ("Greats") in 1897.
In 1898 he was elected a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, a position he held for the rest of his life.
After a year at the Post Office, he was transferred to the Colonial Office and in 1901 he was selected as assistant private secretary to Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain. Later the same year Dawson obtained a similar position with Lord Milner, high commissioner in South Africa.
As Milner"s assistant, Dawson participated in the establishment of British administration in South Africa in the aftermath of the Boer War. United by a common aspiration for Imperial Federation, all later became prominent in the "round table of Empire Loyalists".
Milner wanted to ensure the support of the local newspapers after his return to England.
He persuaded the owners of the Johannesburg Star to appoint Dawson as the paper"s editors Dawson later parlayed this post into a position as the Johannesburg correspondent of The Times. And then 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 February 1919.
In his second stint as editor, Dawson began to use the paper in the same manner as Lord Northcliffe had once done, 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.
Dawson 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.
He promoted the policies of the Baldwin/Chamberlain governments of the period 1936–1940.
Dawson died 7 November 1944 in London.
He was opposed to Zionism.
While there, he became a member of "Milner"s kindergarten", a circle of young administrators and civil servants whose membership included Leo Amery, Bob Brand, Philip Kerr, Richard Feetham, John Buchan and Lionel Curtis. He was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and under his editorship, The Times forbade any mention of German anti-semitism during the pre-war years when the Nazi Party ruled Germany.