Biography
Sarah Lawson was born on October 7, 1955, to Lt.-Col. Sir William Edward Harry Lawson, 5th Baron Burnham, and Anne Petherick. She began her career as a solicitor, primarily working with Macfarlanes in London. After four years, in 1980, she transitioned to Curtis Brown as a writer's agent for several years before settling into producing in 1982, when she was appointed Vice President of Development at DL Taffner Ltd in Los Angeles. Over the following decade, she served as Managing Director of Anglia Television Entertainment and later led her own company, Lawson Productions. Through this, she developed multiple television projects and a film, "The Dawning," starring Anthony Hopkins, Jean Simmons, Trevor Howard, and a then relatively unknown Hugh Grant alongside Rebecca Pidgeon. After several years married to Michael Grade, she remarried David Maher, an Irishman. From 1998, she took a break from producing to focus on raising her family and renovating the historic Ardbraccan property in Ireland. However, she remained executive producer of the BBC radio show "Baldi" and frequently consulted on various industry projects. Up until 2008, her main focus was advancing the project "Grace O'Malley," created with Anne Chambers, a biographer of the famed Irish pirate; it was commissioned by RTÉ in 2008. Unfortunately, Sarah did not live to see its completion. She passed away on November 8, 2008, after a long and courageous battle with cancer, leaving behind her husband, two children, and the lasting memory of an ambitious, patient, kind, generous, loving, brave, and beautiful woman.
