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| William Rees-Mogg, former Times editor, dies | William Rees-Mogg, former Times editor, dies |
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| Journalist William Rees-Mogg, former editor of the Times, has died aged 84. | Journalist William Rees-Mogg, former editor of the Times, has died aged 84. |
| Lord Rees-Mogg, who was Times editor for 14 years, passed away after a short illness, according to the newspaper. | Lord Rees-Mogg, who was Times editor for 14 years, passed away after a short illness, according to the newspaper. |
| The peer was also a former chairman of the Arts Council and vice-chairman of the BBC. | The peer was also a former chairman of the Arts Council and vice-chairman of the BBC. |
| "It has been a mercifully short illness. He died very peacefully and a member of his family was with him. He was very prepared for it," his son, the MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, told the newspaper. | |
| Lord Rees-Mogg was born in Somerset and went from Oxford - where he was president of the students' union - to the Financial Times, then to the Sunday Times, where he was deputy editor for three years. | |
| He finally went to the Times, where he succeeded Sir William Haley as editor, in January 1967 and was at the helm during one of the most turbulent periods in the newspaper's history, until March 1981. | |
| A dispute over new technology led to the newspaper being off the streets for 11 months in 1978-9. | |
| When it returned he was still editor, but before long Lord Thomson sold out to Rupert Murdoch, and Lord Rees-Mogg was succeeded by Harold Evans. | |
| In an editorial, he referred to his departure as "my resumption of liberty". | |
| His son Jacob, Conservative MP for North East Somerset, said his father had worked until the very end, writing his final column for the Times just two weeks ago. | |
| "I had the greatest father anyone could ever want, who always encouraged his children in the different things that they did," he told the newspaper. | |
| "He had the most extraordinary knowledge of almost every subject you could ever ask him about, and had this fascinating position in British public life for the last 60 years. | |
| "He interviewed the leader of the opposition only six weeks ago, and had been a speechwriter for Anthony Eden. | |
| "We are all enormously proud of him and all that he did; and that he found time to be the most active and loving father." | |
| Lord Rees-Mogg was also the proprietor of an antiquarian book firm, chairman of the publishers Sidgwick & Jackson and a director of GEC. | |
| He was knighted in 1981, and created a life peer in 1988. He was married with two sons and three daughters. |