After obtaining a degree in Economics at University College, London, Lawton qualified as a chartered accountant before working in a variety of IT-related sales and consultancy organisations. During this time he was primarily known for his passion for racing motorcycles and then cars. Then in his mid-thirties he forsook the commercial world to become a full-time writer and researcher.

His first book, Giza: The Truth (Virgin, 1999), was co-authored with Chris Ogilvie-Herald. After years of increasingly hysterical speculation about the age and purpose of the Great Pyramid of Khufu in the run up to the millennium, this book was hailed as “an excellent example of a more sober approach”. It has gone on to sell more than 20,000 copies worldwide, and has developed a reputation as a prime source text for those interested in gaining an in-depth understanding of the monuments at Giza.

As a by-product of this research Lawton also set up a discussion page on his website on which he published debates between himself and various alternative researchers — such as Robert Bauval on his Orion Correlation Theory, and Robert Schoch on the age of the Great Sphinx.

Lawton’s second book, Genesis Unveiled (Virgin, 2003), has been described as containing “remarkable new insights into the spirituality of the pre-flood human race”, and has sold over 10,000 copies worldwide. In general it cited ancient texts and traditions from around the globe to support the idea of an antediluvian race of high spirituality whose descent into decadence and materialism was halted by a global catastrophe some 11,500 ya. However Lawton rejected the popular revisionist idea that this race had mastered high levels of technology. And in particular he put forward two new postulations:

• He found a collection of global references in “creation of man” texts to multiple attempts to create a successful human. These he interpreted as veiled references to initial attempts by relatively advanced, human-type souls to incarnate in pre-human, hominid forms. He argued that these early attempts were described as unsuccessful because these forms were insufficiently advanced from a physiological perspective to play host to such souls.
• He found widespread references in all the most ancient and sacred “creation” texts and traditions right around the globe to the origins of everything lying in the “deep/waters/void/chasm/abyss”, which contain the “potential/seed/embryo” that is activated by the mere “will/word” of the ultimate creative force. He argued that this consistency indicated that they all originally came from a single source of highly esoteric understanding, whether physical or nonphysical.

As a by-product of this research Lawton also published a number of papers about the ancient Mesopotamian texts, as well as being a vocal critic of the “ancient astronaut” interpretation put forward by alternative writer Zecharia Sitchin.

Lawton introduced the idea of Rational Spirituality in The Book of the Soul (RS Press, 2004). This was hailed as “masterly and scholarly” and “a book that intellectuals need not be ashamed of having on their shelves”.

Describing Rational Spirituality as an approach that for the first time relies exclusively on “evidence not faith”, Lawton has also written about this worldview in a variety of journals. He uses three main areas of evidence for its foundations:

• Research into near-death experiences, to prove the concept of the separate soul.
• Research into children who remember past lives spontaneously, as pioneered by Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia.
• Research into past-life regression, especially by the pioneering Australian psychologist Peter Ramster.

The latter two areas support the idea of reincarnation, and in all three Lawton concentrates on cases involving what he refers to as “obscure and verifiable evidence”.

His other main contribution in The Book of the Soul was to bring together all the research into regression into the time “between lives”, or “interlife” as he called it. This was conducted by pioneers like Joel Whitton, Helen Wambach, Peter Ramster, Edith Fiore and Michael Newton. Lawton demonstrated the high level of consistency in the results obtained by these pioneers, and argued that this could not be explained by them working together, or by their subjects themselves having prior knowledge of work that was then very little known.

In 2007 Lawton produced a highly simplified version of his spiritual research in The Little Book of the Soul.