Peter Donaldson (27 October 1934 – 6 September 2002) was a British economist, academic, author, and radio and

television broadcaster A television broadcaster or television network or is a telecommunications network for distribution of television content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations, pay television providers or, in the United St ...

Academic career

Born in Eccles, Lancashire, Donaldson's family moved to

Gillingham, Kent Gillingham ( ) is a large town in the unitary authority area of Medway in the ceremonial county of Kent, England. The town forms a conurbation with neighbouring towns Chatham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham. It is also the largest town in the ...

, when he was only 18 months old. Following education at the local

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...

he gained a scholarship to read philosophy, politics and economics at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

. In 1957 he became a junior lecturer at the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

, before moving to the

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_labe ...

in 1960. In 1964 he took up a position at

Osmania University Osmania University is a collegiate public state university located in Hyderabad, Telangana, India. Mir Osman Ali Khan, the 7th Nizam of Hyderabad in 1918 , He released a farman to establish OSMANIA UNIVERSITY on the day of 28 August 1918. It ...

Hyderabad, India Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the '' de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River, in the northern part of Southern In ...

, where he stayed until 1967, except for a six-month stint back in the United Kingdom at

Ruskin College Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is an independent educational institution in Oxford, England. It is not a college of Oxford University. It is named after the essayist, art and social critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) an ...

in 1965. On completing his term in Hyderabad he returned to Ruskin College full-time and remained on staff there until his retirement in the early 1990s.

Publishing and broadcasting career

During the course of his early academic career Donaldson became increasingly aware of the limited scope, poor standard, and inaccessibility of economics teaching at school and undergraduate level. In order to provide better teaching material, during his time at Leicester University he began to write what would, in 1965, be published as his first book: ''Guide to the British Economy''. It was this work – which was to be republished in three further editions in 1967, 1971 and 1976 – that established his reputation as a populariser of economics. Soon after its publication the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

approached Donaldson, and with the corporation he devised and presented ''Managing the Economy'' on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

during the latter part of the 1960s. Donaldson's time in India had stirred an interest in development economics, and this was reflected in his follow-up program ''Affluence and Inequality'' which aired during the early 1970s, also on Radio 4. The series was accompanied by a book, ''Worlds Apart'', which was based on the program and dealt with similar subject matter. A number of further educational and popular books appeared during the late 1970s and early 1980s, before Donaldson returned to broadcasting with Yorkshire Television-produced programs for ITV Schools and the newly launched

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

television station. His shows ''10 x Economics'' and ''A Question of Economics'' were popular with both the general public and teachers, and were widely used in economics classrooms. Both were accompanied by books of the same name.

Selected bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Donaldson, Peter 1934 births 2002 deaths Academics of Ruskin College Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford British broadcasters British economists Academics of the University of Leeds