Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky

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Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky (born 25 April 1939 in Harbin, China) is a British economist of Russian origin and the author of a major three volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, for which he received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Skidelsky was educated at Brighton College and at Jesus College, Oxford. He was a Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He then became an Associate Professor of History at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and then professor of history, philosophy and European studies at the Polytechnic of North London. He recently retired as Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick after which he was appointed Professorial Fellow of the Global Policy Institute at London Metropolitan University.

He has been a member of a number of political parties: originally a Labour member, he quit that party to become a founding member of the SDP before again quitting to join the Conservative Party (which he was later to leave) and is former Chairman of the Social Market Foundation.

He was created a life peer as Baron Skidelsky, of Tilton in the County of East Sussex, in 1991, and was formerly Conservative Party spokesman for Treasury Affairs in the House of Lords, but was removed for his opposition to the NATO actions against Milošević's Yugoslavia.

Other books of his include Politicians and the Slump, English Progressive Schools, Oswald Mosley, and The World After Communism.

Lord Skidelsky has been a Governor of Brighton College since 1998, and is now Chairman of the Governors. He has also been an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, since 1997. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.