Richard Sidney Sayers (1908–1989)

Richard Sayers’s greatest strength was as an economic historian of institutional changes within the British financial system, especially relating to the Bank of England, for which he became the second official historian covering the years 1891-1944; but also writing the histories of Lloyds and Gilletts, and a wider study entitled Financial Policy, 1939-45. Nevertheless, he is best known for two other contributions. First, his textbook, Modern Banking, remained required reading on this subject for all British undergraduates from 1937 until the early 1970s; second, he played the major role in the domestic monetary analysis of the Radcliffe Report (1959). This latter role was often not well received, and his historical and institutional approach to the subject began to be treated as unfashionable and outdated, so that Sayers, always a lone introvert, had a somewhat sad end to his lif