In Memoriam: Lord Robert Skidelsky
Lord Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky, passed away April 15 of 2026, was born in the city of Harbin, Manchuria in 1939. Skidelsky was raised in a Russian household but spent much of his childhood in Britain after his family was interned briefly in a Japanese camp during World War II. His passion for Keynes blossomed years later while studying the politics of the Great Depression at Nuffield College, Oxford as a research fellow in history. Skidelsky found himself drawn to Keynes’s insistence that unemployment was not an unchangeable fact of society, but rather a solvable problem. Skidelsky’s interest in the work and life of Keynes would endure throughout his life, resulting in a multitude of his own works dedicated to the founding father of macroeconomics.
Lauded for his ability to immerse himself in the lives of his subjects, Skidelsky wrote two of the three volumes of his John Maynard Keynes biography while living in the late economist’s home. Skidelsky’s dedication to an authentic portrayal shaped his work and his methods: “There were many arguments and divisions, and they wanted to make sure that this biography of Keynes was their Keynes, and so I listened to all of them, and in the end wrote my Keynes.” His biography of John Maynard Keynes (1983,1992, 2000) won five prizes, including the Wolfson Prize for History, the Duff Cooper Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations, and the Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations.
Skidelsky later served on the Levy Institute Board of Advisors and was emeritus professor of political economy at Warwick University. His book on the financial crisis—Keynes: The Return of the Master—was published in September 2010. He was made a member of the House of Lords in 1991 (he sat on the cross-benches) and elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1994. How Much is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life, co-written with his son Edward, was published in July 2012.
He was also the author of Britain in the 20th Century: A Success? (Vintage, 2014), editor of The Essential Keynes (Penguin Classics, 2015), and co-editor of Who Runs the Economy? (Palgrave, 2016) and Austerity Vs Stimulus (Palgrave, 2017).
He wrote and filed a series of lectures on the History and Philosophy of Economics available as an open online course in partnership with the Institute for New Economics Thinking. His latest book, Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, published in 2024, is an ambitious survey of the impact of machines on humanity in its various aspects, peaceful and warlike, democratic and Orwellian, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He came to Bard College in 2024 to discuss this release in a lecture titled, “The Machine Age and the Human Condition: Possible Futures.”
The Levy Institute’s published conversations with Skidelsky can be found below. As we reflect on his life’s work, the Levy Economics Institute mourns the loss of Lord Robert Skidelsky, historian, economist, and sincere friend of the Institute.