ABSTRACT
Wilfred Beckerman was born in 1925. After war service in the Royal Navy he entered Cambridge University in 1946 and completed the Economics Tripos in two years under the special regulations for ex-servicemen. In 1948 he entered graduate study in Cambridge, and was appointed to his first job in 1950 at the University of Nottingham, which had recently gained full University status after many years as a University College. Beckerman spent two years here, before moving in 1952 to the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in Paris, where he stayed until 1961. This was followed by a period at the National Institute for Economic and Social Research in London, and then from 1964 until 1969 he was a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, latterly also the Economic Adviser to the President of the Board of Trade 1967-69. He was Professor of Political Economy at University College London from 1969 to 1975, when he returned to Balliol and where he stayed until retirement in 1992. The following is an edited version of an interview conducted in Oxford on 19 July 1994.
