About William Shawcross
Sir William Hartley Hume Shawcross (born 28 May 1946) is a British journalist, writer, and broadcaster. He is the incumbent Commissioner for Public Appointments. From 2012 to 2018 he chaired the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Shawcross has written and lectured on issues of international policy, geopolitics, Southeast Asia and refugees, as well as the British royal family. He has written for several publications, including Time, Newsweek, International Herald Tribune, The Spectator, The Washington Post and Rolling Stone, in addition to writing numerous books on international topics: the Prague Spring, the Vietnam War, the Iranian Revolution, the Iraq War, foreign assistance, humanitarian intervention, and the United Nations. His works Sideshow (1979) and The Quality of Mercy (1984) were among The New York Times Book Review's books of the year. Unable to obtain a permanent position at the newspaper, he wrote his first book, a biography of the Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubček, which was published in 1970. The book concluded that Dubcek "was quite convinced that he had discovered in 1968 that for which philosophers and philanthropists have for centuries searched—the just society.
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