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 a number of 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. Early life and education The eldest of three children, William Shawcross was born on 28 May 1946 in Sussex, to the barrister Hartley Shawcross and his second wife Joan Mather. At the time of his birth, his father was the Labour MP for St Helens, the Attorney General for England and Wales, the first British principal delegate to the United Nations, and the Chief Prosecutor for the United Kingdom at the Nuremberg trials. His mother died in a riding accident on the Sussex Downs in 1974. His father died at the age of 101 in 2003. Shawcross was educated at St Aubyns Preparatory School in Rottingdean, followed by Eton College, and University College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1968. After leaving Oxford, he attended Saint Martin's School of Art to study sculpture and became a freelance researcher for The Sunday Times. Unable to obtain a permanent position at the newspaper, he wrote his first book, a biography of the Czechoslovakian leader Alexander Dubček, which was published in 1970. Career After leaving Oxford, Shawcross worked as a journalist for The Sunday Times, and contributed to a book by its journalists on Watergate. In 1973, as a Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association, Shawcross worked in Washington, DC, on the staffs of Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative Les Aspin. From 1986 to 1996, Shawcross was Chairman of ARTICLE 19, the international centre on censorship, from 1986 to 1996. From 1997 to 2002, he was a Member of the Council of the Disasters Emergency Committee, and a board member of the International Crisis Group from 1995 to 2005.