At the end of the Seventies, having received both a Nobel Prize and the still greater accolade of his own TV series, a diminutive retired professor from Chicago became for the moment one of the most influential private individuals in the world. Fêted by financiers, mobbed by the media, patronised by presidents and prime ministers, Milton Friedman had at last arrived. The doctrine for which he had fought - initially almost single-handedly - for a quarter of a century had become the New Orthodoxy. Monetarism had overthrown discredited Keynesianism, and nowhere was its victory more warmly welcomed than at Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.

LRB 6 February 1986 | PDF Download