Michael Shanks was born in 1927 and educated at Blundells and Balliol College, Oxford, interspersed by a period in the Royal Artillery, in which he was commissioned. After leaving Oxford he worked for a time as a university lecturer in economics in the U.S.A. before going into journalism. He spent a year on the Economist before joining the Financial Times as leader and feature writer in 1953. He became labour correspondent in 1954 and industrial editor in 1957. He has travelled widely in Europe (on both sides of the Iron Curtain) and North America. He has written for a very wide range of publications, from the Director to Tribune ; he also broadcasts fairly frequently on both sound and television (both channels). He is currently engaged on a book on nationalization. The Stagnant Society is his first book - except for a volume of undergraduate poems which, as he says, 'is now mercifully out of print'. Michael Shanks is married and has three children.
