Lord Roll is a very distinguished man, who has levitated over a period of 70 years or so from a small village in an obscure corner of Central Europe to the topmost rank of the British Establishment. He has had three separate careers. First he was an academic, writing among other things A History of Economic Thought, a valuable introduction to the subject still in print almost 50 years after its first publication. Then he was a civil servant, deeply involved at one point in the abortive 1961-63 negotiations on British entry into the EEC, and later Permanent Secretary of the 1964-70 Labour Government's Department of Economic Affairs. Finally he became a power in the City, as Chairman of Warburg's, Director of the Bank of England, Times Newspapers, and so on and so forth.

LRB 5 September 1985 | PDF Download