The Life and Times of Thomas Balogh: A Macaw Among Mandarins [Paperback]

The author successfully conveys the atmosphere of Whitehall in those troubled years, and captures the flavour of the times with uncanny accuracy. --Anthony Howard *** Thomas Balogh (1905-1985) had a conspiratorial nature and deliberately kept to the shadows. This has caused his substantial role in political life to be little known. His predictions were usually right and he looked at economic and political issues from unconventional angles, but he thrived on controversy. This first and only biography covers his life and work, from his youth in Budapest to his coming to Britain in 1930 and being taken up by Keynes; his advance to being a well known if highly controversial political economist; his reputation as a brilliant though eccentric don at Balliol College, Oxford; his burgeoning interest in politics; and the time of his greatest influence as economic advisor to his close friend Harold Wilson, and later as a Minister of State. June Morris provides new insights into the Labour Party and Labour government policies between the mid 1950s until 1982. Balogh was such an acute observer of the values and mores of the time that his diary comments throw new and entertaining light on social, as well as political life, at the highest level. Interviews with over thirty of the most eminent people in the political and economic world of his era shed new light on the issues and events of the period. [Subject: UK History, Politics, Economics]