Lionel Robbins

Susan Howson is Professor of Economics and Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto. She was educated at the London School of Economics (1964–1969) and at the University of Cambridge, where she obtained her PhD in 1975. She has held visiting positions in the International Division of the Bank of England (1979–1981); Nuffield College, Oxford (1984–1985); and Wolfson College, Cambridge (1991–1993). Professor Howson is the author of Domestic Monetary Management in Britain 1919–38 (Cambridge University Press, 1975) and British Monetary Policy, 1945–51 (1993) and co-author with Donald Winch of The Economic Advisory Council (Cambridge University Press, 1977). She edited The Collected Papers of James Meade (3 volumes, 1988) and co-edited with Donald Moggridge the wartime diaries of Lionel Robbins and Nobel Laureate James Meade, and the Cabinet Office diary of James Meade (1990). Professor Howson began research on the life and work of Lionel Robbins in the early 1990s. She edited a selection of his major articles in economic theory and economic policy under the title Economic Science and Political Economy (1997). Her work on British economic policy has been published in The Economic Journal, the Economic History Review, History of Political Economy, the Journal of Economic History and Oxford Economic Papers, among other publications. She is also a contributor to the Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain (Structural Change and Growth, Volume III, 2004). The recipient of two prizes for research in economic history, Professor Howson has also held two Connaught Senior Research Fellowships in the Social Sciences, in 2004 and 2007, for her work on Lionel Robbins.

• Introduction; 1. Father and son; 2. The Great War; 3. Postwar; 4. The London School of Economics; 5. Iris Gardiner; 6. New College Oxford; 7. The young professor; 8. Fritz and Lionel; 9. The School in the mid 1930s; 10. The approach of war; 11. The economics of war; 12. Director of the Economic Section; 13. Anglo-American conversations; 14. The Law Mission and the Steering Committee; 15. 1944; 16. The last months of the war; 17. The postwar settlement; 18. Return to the School; 19. The end of the transition; 20. LSE in the early 1950s; 21. Chairman of the National Gallery; 22. Lord Robbins; 23. The Robbins Report; 24. The sixties; 25. The arts; 26. The troubles at LSE; 27. Retirement; Conclusion.

'This impressive biography opens a window into the life of the person who was at the centre of the economics profession in Britain for four decades. It will be an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to understand what happened to British economics in the twentieth century.' Roger Backhouse, University of Birmingham