Education
From 1953 to 1958, he was a boarder at Brighton College.
From 1961 to 1969, he was successively research student, senior student, and research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford
From 1953 to 1958, he was a boarder at Brighton College.
From 1961 to 1969, he was successively research student, senior student, and research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford
During a two-year research fellowship at the British Academy, Skidelsky began work in his biography of Oswald Mosley (published in 1975) and published English Progressive Schools (1969). In 1970, he became an Associate Professor of History at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. But the controversy surrounding the publication of his biography of Sir Oswald 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, he was professor of history, philosophy and European studies at the Polytechnic of North London. In 1978, he was appointed Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick, where he has since remained, though 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. Skidelsky has been an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, since 1997. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. He is currently writing a book on globalisation with Vijay Joshi, a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford.
Skidelsky has been a member of three political parties: originally a Labour Party member, he left that party to become a founding member of the Social Democratic Party, where he remained until the party's dissolution in 1992. In 1991, he was made a life peer, and in 1992 he became a Conservative. He was made chief opposition spokesman in the Lords, first for Culture, then for Treasury affairs (1997–1999), but he was removed by the then Conservative party leader William Hague, for publicly opposing NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia. In 2001, he left the Conservative Party for the Cross Benches. He was chairman of the Social Market Foundation between 1991 and 2001