Shirley Robin Letwin (17 February 1924 – 19 June 1993) was an American academic who lived in London.[1][2]

Biography

Early life

Shirley Robin Letwin was born in Chicago, Illinois.[1][2] Her family were Jewish immigrants from Kiev.[3][1][2] She graduated from the University of Chicago, where she was taught by Friedrich Hayek, and did graduate studies at the London School of Economics.[1][2] She decided to move to England permanently in 1965.

Career

She taught at LSE and at Peterhouse, a college of the University of Cambridge, in the 1970s,[2] a time when the college was a haunt of radical conservative thinkers focused loosely around Maurice Cowling. She wrote many books about conservatism, and one about Anthony Trollope.[4]

She met Margaret Thatcher through her friend Keith Joseph, and started working for her.[1] She also worked for the Centre for Policy Studies.[1] She was also close to Michael Oakeshott and later became his literary executor.[1][2] In 1987, she gave a lecture at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, Australia.[2]

Personal life

She was married to William Letwin.[1] They had one son, Oliver Letwin.[1][2][5][6] They lived in London, in a house overlooking Regent's Park.[1] She was an avid tennis player, and once played with Milton Friedman despite the fact that it was snowing.[1]

Bibliography

  • The Gentleman in Trollope: individuality and moral conduct (1982)
  • On the History of the Idea of Law
  • The Pursuit of Certainty: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Beatrice Webb
  • The Anatomy of Thatcherism (1992)

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Peregrine Worsthorne, Obituary: Shirley Robin Letwin, The Independent, June 22, 1993
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kenneth Minogue, Shirley Robin Letwin, 1924-1993 Archived 2014-01-08 at the Wayback Machine, Policy, Spring 1993
  3. ↑ "Obituary: Professor William Letwin". The Daily Telegraph. London. 4 March 2013. ISSN 0307-1235. OCLC 49632006. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
  4. ↑ Noel Annan, How Should a Gent Behave?, The New York Review of Books, February 03, 1983
  5. ↑ Melanie McDonagh, Letwin's parents are the key to his soul, The Daily Telegraph, February 20, 2004
  6. ↑ Michael White, Oliver Letwin: more at home in a senior common room than at a public meeting, The Guardian, December 07, 2012
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