Author Description

Professor Sayers’s period begins within ‘the statistical era’, so that far more reliable formulations of economic facts are possible, and much of it has fallen within his own lifetime, so that he is able to enliven his account with a humane and personal vividness. But the period 1990-1939 was one of far greater complexity in economic affairs than ever before, and Sayers has shown a masterly selectivity and judgment in explaining, within a short book, the revolutions in Britain’s place in international trade; the effects of both the First World War and technical progress upon industry in general, and upon four major export industries and agriculture in particular; the development of social ideas that began to lead towards the Welfare State; and the responses of both private finance and state intervention to changed economic conditions. Richard Sidney Sayers, F.B.A., was lecturer in economics at Pembroke, Exeter and Corpus Christi Colleges from 1935 to 1945 and Sir Ernest Cassel Professor of Economics at the University of London from 1947 to 1968.