Skidelsky's parents, Boris Skidelsky and Galia Sapelkin, were British subjects of Russian ancestry, Jewish on his father's side and Christian on his mother's. His father worked for the family firm L. S. Skidelsky which leased the Mulin coalmine from the Chinese government. Boris had three brothers, one of whom was the British novelist and bridge player and writer S. J. "Skid" Simon. In 1919, a factory was built by L. S. Skidelsky in Harbin for obtaining albumin from blood. When war broke out between Britain and Japan in December 1941, he and his parents were interned first in Manchuria then Japan and finally released in exchange for Japanese internees in England. He then went back to China with his parents in 1947, living for a little over a year in Tientsin. They left for Hong Kong just before the Chinese Communists took the city. Skidelsky has two sons, Edward Skidelsky, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Exeter; and William Skidelsky, a journalist and author of Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession.
Education
From 1953 to 1958, Skidelsky was a boarder at Brighton College. He went on to read history at Jesus College, Oxford. From 1961 to 1969, he was successively research student, senior student and research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1967, he published his first book, Politicians and the Slump, based on his D.Phil. dissertation. The book explores the ways in which British politicians handled the Great Depression.
Academic career
During a two-year research fellowship at the British Academy, Skidelsky began work on his biography of Oswald Mosley and published English Progressive Schools. In 1970, he became an associate professor of history in the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. However, the controversy surrounding the publication of his biography of Mosley in which he was felt to have let Mosley off too lightly led Johns Hopkins University to refuse him tenure. Oxford University also proved unwilling to give him a permanent post. From 1976 to 1978, Skidelsky was professor of history, philosophy and European studies at the Polytechnic of North London. In 1978, Skidelsky was appointed Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick, where he has since remained, although joining the Economics Department as Professor of Political Economy in 1990. He was appointed professorial fellow of the Global Policy Institute at London Metropolitan University. Since 1997, Skidelsky has been an honorary fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994.. Since 2016, he serves as a director/trustee of the School of Civic Eduction in London , which forms part of an association of schools of political studies, under the auspices of the Directorate General of Democracy of the Council of Europe. He is currently writing a book on globalisation with Vijay Joshi, a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
Political career
Skidelsky has been a member of three political parties. Originally a Labour Party member, Skidelsky left that party to become a founding member of the Social Democratic Party, where he remained until the party's dissolution in 1992. On 15 July 1991, he was created a life peer as Baron Skidelsky, of Tilton in the County of East Sussex and in 1992 became a Conservative. He was made chief opposition spokesman in the Lords, first for Culture, then for Treasury affairs, but he was removed by Conservative party leader William Hague for publicly opposing NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. In 2001, Skidelsky left the Conservative Party for the Cross Benches. He was chairman of the Social Market Foundation between 1991 and 2001. In September 2015, Skidelsky endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election, writing in The Guardian: "Corbyn should be praised, not castigated, for bringing to public attention these serious issues concerning the role of the state and the best ways to finance its activities. The fact that he is dismissed for doing so illustrates the dangerous complacency of today's political elites. Millions in Europe rightly feel that the current economic order fails to serve their interests. What will they do if their protests are simply ignored?" He currently writes a column on economic history for Project Syndicate, an international media organization.
