(Details the life of the Englishwoman who married Soviet d...)
Details the life of the Englishwoman who married Soviet diplomat Maxim Litvinov and her years in the U.S.S.R. under Stalin and in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C
Government and the Universities in Britain: Programme and Performance 1960-1980
(This book describes the programme of rapid expansion set ...)
This book describes the programme of rapid expansion set out for British Universities in the Robbins Report of 1963, and tells the actual story of its performance up to the early 1980s. The prescription and the realisation often differed in vital ways, and Mr Carswell is able to give an insider's view, fascinating and sometimes controversial, of the events. He served as Treasury assessor during the Robbins enquiry, and prepared the Treasury evidence for it. From 1964 to 1967 he was head of the universities branch of the newly formed Department of Education and Science, financing the expansion of those years. From 1974 to 1977 he was Secretary of the University Grants Committee. Mr Carswell is also a historian, and writes with wit and detachment about the people and events to which he was close. He identifies the large policy decisions (that in favour of the 'binary' division in British tertiary education, for example), the unexpected phenomena (the drift from science) and other significant factors (student disturbances, inflation and recession, the manipulation of fees) which proved decisive.
John Patrick Carswell was a civil servant, historian and author. He served at the British Civil Service for more than thirty years.
Background
John Carswell was born on May 30, 1918, in Holly Bush House, in Hampstead, north London, United Kingdom, next door to the historic Holly Bush pub. He was the son of the barrister and writer Donald Carswell, and the writer Catherine Carswell.
Education
Carswell attended Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and St John's College, Oxford.
Carswell devoted more than thirty years to the British Civil Service beginning in 1946.
Among the positions he held were assistant secretary with the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, joint secretary to the Phillips Committee on the Economic and Financial Problems of Provision for Old Age, assistant secretary with Her Majesty’s Treasury, assistant under-secretary of state for the Department of Education and Science, and secretary of the University Grants Committee.
Carswell began five years as a secretary with the British Academy in 1978, becoming secretary emeritus in 1983.
During his career, he also served with the Robbins Committee on Higher Education as treasury assessor. He also pursued work as a historian and concerned himself with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Among the books he wrote or edited are Romantic Rogue: Being the Singular Life and Adventures of Rudolph Erich Raspe, Creator of Baron Munchausen, The South Sea Bubble, The Civil Servant and His World, The Descent on England: A Study of the English Revolution of 1688 and Its European Background, Lives and Letters: A. R. Orage, Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, S. S. Koteliansky, 1906-1957, The Saving of Kenwood and the Northern Heights, and The Porcupine: A Biography of Algernon Sidney.
Carswell was made a life member of the Institute of Historical Research in 1983 and became an honorary research fellow with University College that same year. Carswell also chaired the Heath and Old Hampstead Society for a time.
Royal Society of Literature
Garrick Club
Personality
John Carswell was a great traveller and an inspirational guide to his family.
His battle against philistinism was tempered by an impish wit and courtly good manners. Slightly pedantic in style, with a gentle charm, he nevertheless pursued what he saw as good causes with terrier-like tenacity.
He had done everything he wanted to do, and during the last months of his life he talked to everyone who had been important to him.
Connections
Carswell married Ianthe Elstob in 1944. They had two daughters.