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John Charles Dodson, 3rd Baron Monk Bretton (born 17 July 1924) is an agriculturist, Sussex landowner, UK peer of the realm, and long serving member of the House of Lords.
John Dodson succeeded his father, John William Dodson, in 1933.
He was only nine years old. Educated at Westminster and New College, Oxford, he became a member of Brooks's in 1949. He married Zoe Scott in 1958, and has two sons.
Between 1966-68 Lord and Lady Monk Bretton had Raymond Erith re-model a Queen Anne house his great-grandfather, Sir John Dodson, had acquired near Barcombe from the family of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Dodsons had hitherto largely just rented it out; Bose, Lord Alfred Douglas, for example, was a tenant circa 1920. The house, Shelley's Folly, Erith described as 'a little pavilion, on a knoll, built for the view'. Monk Bretton, having consequently sold another larger and newer nearby house, lived there until moving to Switzerland in 2004.
He has been a Deputy Lieutenant for East Sussex since 1983, and a stalwart of the South of England Agricultural Society show, at Ardingly, since its foundation in 1967.
Following expulsion from the House of Lords in 1999 he moved to the Lake Geneva northern shore.
Monk Bretton in the Lords
Lord Monk Bretton 'Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father' on Tuesday, 27 January 1948. The 23-year-old was greeted by the Second Reading of the Parliament Act 1949. Over 51 years later the by then 75-year-old peer was excluded by the House of Lords Act 1999. His maiden speech was made 18 March 1948 in Lord Dowding's Notice debate on the Slaughter of Animals.
The 'capricious donation of birth' (a phrase coined by the late Lord Williams of Mostyn in 1999), it could be said, saw that he shares with his grandfather, 1st Lord Monk Bretton (a successful Chairman of Committees (1865–72) and friend of Gladstone):
'A cold formal manner, a dry voice, a level flow of speech, and a painfully practical turn of mind, [that] whilst making Mr. Dodson's intervention sometimes useful, do not endear him to his audience',At 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday 9 November 1999 Lord Grantchester rose to ask Her Majesty's Government how their proposals for the milk industry and in particular for the supply of raw milk will affect the rural economy, in the ensuing debate Monk Bretton made his valediction. He concluded his 13-minute speech thus:
That is the end of my remarks, but I wish also to say goodbye. It is likely that the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, who initiated this debate, and I will no longer attend this House. I am delighted that a maiden speaker [ Lord Carlile of Berriew ] is to speak after me. I hope that he will carry the torch for British dairying.