Lord Robert Skidelsky, the preeminent British historian and peer who spent decades chronicling the life of John Maynard Keynes, died peacefully at his home in East Sussex on April 15, 2026, at the age of 86. He was widely celebrated as the definitive biographer of the man who defined the modern economic age.

He died at Tilton House, the former country home of John Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova. This residence cemented a profound physical and intellectual proximity to his subject. The year 1983 marked the Keynesian Convergence. Skidelsky published the first volume of his definitive biography, 'Hopes Betrayed, 1883 to 1920'. This was not merely a book release but the genesis of a thirty-year intellectual marriage between the biographer and his subject. It elevated him from a standard academic, having previously served as Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick since 1978, to a literary titan.

His unique outsider looking in perspective on the British establishment stemmed from his early years. Born in Harbin, Manchukuo, to Russian parents Boris and Galia Skidelsky who were British subjects, his childhood was abruptly interrupted. During World War II, he was interned by the Japanese in the Stanley Internment Camp in Hong Kong, as detailed by The Times. He later arrived in Britain, boarding at Brighton College from 1953 to 1958, and earned a first-class degree in Modern History from Jesus College, Oxford, in 1961.

He published his first book, 'Politicians and the Slump', in 1967. However, it was the Keynes trilogy, completed in 2000, that defined his career. Economist Tyler Cowen noted the magnitude of this achievement, stating, "His three-volume biography of Keynes is in my opinion one of the very best books ever written, up there with Caro on Moses," as highlighted by Marginal Revolution. Skidelsky rejected economic dogma, famously observing, "I've never believed that economics is the home of universal truths; the truths shift with the conditions of the time." He won the Wolfson History Prize in 1992 for the second volume, and both the Duff Cooper Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biographical work.

Elevated to the peerage as Baron Skidelsky of Tilton in the County of East Sussex on July 15, 1991, he brought his erudition to the House of Lords. He served as the founding chairman of the Social Market Foundation from 1991 to 2001 and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. He also served as Chairman of the Board of Governors at Brighton College from 1998 to 2017. He married artist Augusta Hope in 1970, and they had two sons, Edward and William, and one daughter, Juliet. He co-authored 'How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life' with Edward in 2012. In his final years, he issued profound warnings about the human condition. Following his 2018 critique 'Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics', he released his final book, 'Mindless: The Human Condition in the Age of Artificial Intelligence', in 2024, according to the Levy Economics Institute.

Lord Skidelsky leaves behind a monumental legacy as the man who rescued Keynes from dry theory. He transformed a towering intellect back into a living, breathing figure for the modern age. Through his meticulous craft, he ensured that the architect of modern economics was understood not just through equations, but through the vibrant, shifting realities of human history.