RAWLINSON, Peter 1919-

(Peter Anthony Rawlinson)

PERSONAL: Born June 26, 1919, in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England; son of Arthur Richard (a filmscript writer) and Ailsa (Grayson) Rawlinson; married Elaine Dominguez, December 27, 1954; children: Michael, Angela, Anthony. Ethnicity: "English, born and bred." Politics: Conservative. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Home—East Wing, Wardour Castle, Tisbury, Wiltshire SP3 6RH, England; fax: 01747871611.

CAREER: Writer. Called to the Bar in England, 1946, appointed Queen's Counsel, 1959; recorder of Salisbury, England, 1961–62; member of Parliament for Epsom, 1955–78; British Government, solicitor general, 1962–64, privy councilor, 1964, attorney general, 1970–74; Bar of England, chair, 1975–76; House of Lords, member and life peer, 1978–. Military service: Irish Guards, 1939–46; became major.

MEMBER: American Bar Association (honorary member), American College of Trial Lawyers, White's Club, Pratt's Club, Marylebone Cricket Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Knighted, 1962; named honorary fellow, Christ's College, Cambridge, 1980.

WRITINGS:

A Price Too High: An Autobiography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1989.

The Jesuit Factor: A Personal Investigation, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1990.

Hatred and Contempt (novel), Chapman (London, England), 1992.

The Caverel Claim (novel), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Indictment for Murder: A Mystery, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Richmond Diary, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2001.

A Relic of War (novel), Constable (London, England), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: The vast majority of Lord Peter Rawlinson's career was spent working as a lawyer and a politician. He also assumed the roles of autobiographer, investigative journalist, and novelist. Rawlinson wrote about his primary career in A Price Too High: An Autobiography. The book is "a traditionalist's evocation of life at the bar decked out in all its period detail," according to Anthony Howard in his review for the London Observer. One of the book's "three points of interest" according to New Statesman contributor John Campbell, is Rawlinson's discourse on his title's meaning—"the intolerable cost to family life of holding public office." Also interesting, stated Campbell, is Rawlinson's dialog on two top political adversaries: Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher.

Despite its high profile, Campbell wrote that Rawlinson's discussion of his upbringing and career track is rather uninteresting. "His treatment of [the cases highlighting his legal career] is too perfunctory to have more than anecdotal interest (and little enough of that). The predominant tone is blandly self-congratulatory." Insofar as Lord Rawlinson's generally tedious book has a point, it is to deplore the decline of [the] tradition that was common to barrister-politicians a half-century before—that "successful silks … go into parliament, usually on the Conservative side, not so much aspiring to political office as advancing their standing on the legal ladder." Howard is more complimentary in his review of A Price Too High, noting: Rawlinson "belonged throughout to the costume drama of the courtroom…. And his performance in these pages certainly does not disappoint."

Rawlinson also wrote The Jesuit Factor: A Personal Investigation. Peter Stanford reviewed the work for New Statesman and Society, commenting: "The Jesuit Factor, billed as a personal investigation into the most public and powerful religious order in the Catholic church, is in fact a shoddily padded-out rehash of interviews Peter Rawlinson conducted for the BBC in 1986 during a world tour of Jesuit missions. Containing no new research, the book concentrates on … [the Jesuits'] alleged use … of Marxist analysis in the theology of liberation, the church's preferential option for the poor in the past two decades."

Rawlinson, reported Stanford, views any Marxist component as harmful, negatively contaminating that to which it is applied. The Jesuit Factor "is a one-sided indictment," observed Peter Hebblethwaite in the Times Literary Supplement, the reviewer adding: "Rawlinson's main aim was not so much to discover what is the case as to bolster his conviction that the Jesuits are guilty of abandoning spirituality, disobeying the Pope and allying themselves with Marxists and Communists." If viewed as "an entertaining piece of travel writing" instead of "detective work," wrote Listener contributor Dennis Swell, the book "is certainly one for the general reader interested in the Society's affairs." "While he handles the politics rather well, and also manages to give a good flavour of Jesuit life from Warsaw to San Salvador and Tokyo to Poona, the author never seems quite able to get to grips with the tricky bits of Jesuit thinking," noted Swell. "He has a one-dimensional view of notions such as 'faith and justice' and the preferential option for the poor—and that dimension is invariably, and narrowly, political."

As a novelist, Rawlinson published Hatred and Contempt and The Caverel Claim. According to a Spectator assessment by Jon Jolliffe, Hatred and Contempt is a "splendid political and historical thriller…. [with features] drawn with a masterly hand, inspired, no doubt, but decades of first-hand experience." Jolliffe commented: "The whole thing is immensely readable, and perfectly adaptable for stage or television, where its impact might be even greater still."

More recent novels include Indictment for Murder: A Mystery, a legal suspense novel that is, as David Pitt commented in his Booklist review, "more about people than plot." Judge David Trelawney is dead, and his close and long-time friend Sir Jonathan Playfair has been indicted for his murder. Playfair seems to be hiding secret information that could exonerate him, and it is up to his lawyer to represent him without knowing all the facts. A contributor to Publishers Weekly cited the novel for its "drama and suspense," but found, like Pitt, that "it is the psychological history of Trelawney and Playfair's relationship that above all rivets the attention." The Richmond Diary focuses on the words of a dead man, recorded in the titular diary and sold by Richmond's lover and heir to a British tabloid, and the impact that the diary's sordid revelations could have on the prominent Richard Tancred, British minister for defense procurement. Tancred files a lawsuit in self-defense, and it is up to Rawlinson's familiar character Mordecai Ledbury to prosecute the case. "There are plot twists aplenty," observed a contributor to Kirkus Reviews. In addition, the reviewer noted, Rawlinson appears to greatly enjoy thrusting barbs at living representatives of British politics, media, and the legal profession through thinly veiled references in the diary entries. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly also noted the satire, reflecting that the references might be more appealing to British readers familiar with the subjects than to Americans, but nonetheless described the novel as "riveting … until the last page."

Rawlinson told CA: "My fiction is the focus of interesting stories which inevitably contain some scenes of cases in court and features a remarkable advocate called Mordecai Ledbury. He is usually counsel for one party or another. I write to entertain by telling stories with political or legal backgrounds. My autobiography described the life of a law officer in government, obviously a Conservative law officer, but a life in which the legal side was more important than the political. My book about the Jesuits was obviously disliked by some American and British Jesuits. It found more favor with Jesuits who had lived in Eastern Europe."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Rawlinson, Peter, A Price Too High: An Autobiography, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1989.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 1998, Emily Melton, review of The Caverel Claim, p. 573; January 1, 2000, David Pitt, review of Indictment for Murder: A Mystery, p. 886.

Books, March, 1989, review of A Price Too High: An Autobiography, p. 24.

Contemporary Review, May, 1989, review of A Price Too High, p. 278.

Economist, June 3, 1989, review of A Price Too High, p. 90; July 14, 1990, review of The Jesuit Factor: A Personal Investigation, p. 88.

Encounter, June, 1990, review of The Jesuit Factor, p. 50.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1998, p. 1634; December 15, 1999, review of Indictment for Murder, p. 1920; November 1, 2001, review of The Richmond Diary, p. 1522.

Law and Justice, winter-Spring, 1990, Francis Cowper, review of A Price Too High, pp. 91-94.

Listener, May 10, 1990, Dennis Swell, review of The Jesuit Factor, p. 24.

London Review of Books, March 2, 1989, review of A Price Too High, p. 10.

New Law Journal, December 11, 1992, Frances Hegarty, review of Hatred and Contempt, p. 1734.

New Statesman and Society, March 17, 1989, John Campbell, review of A Price Too High, p. 34; May 4, 1990, Peter Stanford, review of The Jesuit Factor, p. 35.

New York Times Book Review, February 3, 2002, Marilyn Stasio, review of The Richmond Diary, p. 28.

Observer (London, England), March 26, 1989, Anthony Howard, review of A Price Too High, p. 46.

Parliamentary Affairs, April, 1990, G. W. Jones, review of A Price Too High, p. 230.

Political Quarterly, January-March, 1991, Ronald Frank Porter, review of A Price Too High, p. 144.

Publishers Weekly, November 9, 1998, review of The Caverel Claim, p. 60; January 31, 2000, review of Indictment for Murder, p. 85; December 3, 2001, review of The Richmond Diary, p. 44.

Spectator, March 25, 1989, review of A Price Too High, p. 31; October 3, 1992, Jon Jolliffe, review of Hatred and Contempt, p. 31.

Times Literary Supplement, May 18, 1990, Peter Hebblethwaite, review of The Jesuit Factor, p. 531.