Robert Skidelsky is the internationally acclaimed author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000). In recent years he has become centrally involved in issues of Russian transition to democracy and a market economy. His influential The World after Communism (Macmillan, 1995), which argues that the collapse of Soviet communism was the most dramatic episode in a general global retreat from collectivism, has recently appeared in a Russian edition. From 1991 to 2001 he was chairman of the Social Market Foundation, a charity that promotes public discussion of the performance of markets and the social framework within which they operate. As Baron Skidelsky of Tilton he was Principal Spokesman for the Opposition on Culture, Media and Sport 1997–98, and on Treasury Affairs 1998–99. He now sits as Cross Bencher in the House of Lords. Robert Skidelsky is currently engaged in writing (with V. R. Joshi of Merton College, Oxford) a book provisionally entitled Sense and Nonsense about Globalisation.