About Robert Skidelsky
Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky, (25 April 1939 – 15 April 2026) was a British economic historian, author and crossbench life peer in the House of Lords. He is best known for his award-winning three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, regarded as the definitive study of the economist's life and work. Educated at Jesus College, Oxford, he held academic posts in history and political economy at several universities and was Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Beyond academia, Skidelsky was influential in British public policy debates, serving as the founding chairman of the Social Market Foundation and writing extensively on economics, fiscal policy, and the political implications of technological change. == Early life == Skidelsky was born on 15 April 1939. His parents, Boris Skidelsky and Galia Sapelkin, were British subjects of Russian ancestry, Jewish on his father's side and Christian on his mother's. His father worked for the family firm L. S. Skidelsky, which leased the Mulin coalmine, the largest private coalmine in Manchuria, from the Chinese government in 1920. Boris had three brothers, one of whom was the British writer and bridge player S. J. "Skid" Simon (1904–1948). In 1919, a factory was built by L. S. Skidelsky in Harbin for obtaining albumin from blood. When war broke out between Britain and Japan in December 1941, Skidelsky and his parents were interned first in Manchuria then in Japan, and were finally released in exchange for Japanese internees in England.
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