Robert Skidelsky

Robert Skidelsky is a historian, a prominent economist and politician. After studying history at Oxford, he investigated economic politics during the Great Depression, which lead to his first book, Politicians and the Slump (1967). Skidelsky’s versatility is illustrated by associate professorships in history, philosophy and European studies, as well as professorships in international relations and political economy. He has also been politically active with the Labour Party, the Social Democratic Party and the Conservative Party consecutively, and has been an independent member of the British House of Lords since 2001. He became well-known for his three-volume biography of economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes (completed in 2000). Together with his son Edward, who teaches philosophy at the University of Exeter, he wrote How Much is Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life (2012), which points out that in our time, we are completely losing sight of the ideal of the ‘good life’.