Robert Hall was born in
Tenterfield, New South Wales, Australia, in 1901. His father, Edgar Hall, was an English mining engineer. while his mother, Rose Helen, was a first-generation Australian, whose father, A. K. Cullen, was Scottish. He was brought up in
Queensland, where he attended
Ipswich State High School. He obtained a degree in engineering at the
University of Queensland, before becoming a
Rhodes scholar at the
University of Oxford in 1923. Having obtained a first class degree in
Modern Greats in 1926, he was appointed to an economics lectureship at
Trinity College, Oxford (1926–47). He was a fellow from 1927 to 1950 and an honorary fellow from 1958. In 1927 he was junior dean. He was a fellow of
Nuffield College, Oxford 1938–47 and a visiting fellow, 1961–64. he was appointed a
Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the
1954 New Year Honours. Following the announcement in June 1969 that he was to be made a
life peer, Hall changed his name by
Deed Poll to Roberthall on 25 September 1969 and was created
Baron Roberthall, of Silverspur in the State of
Queensland and Commonwealth of Australia, and of
Trenance, in the
County of Cornwall on 28 October 1969. In the 1970s and 1980s he served actively in the
House of Lords, latterly as a member of the
Social Democratic Party. In 1981 he attracted attention as one of the 364 economists-signers of a letter to
The Times who questioned
Margaret Thatcher's economic policy, warning that it would only result in deepening the prevailing
depression. He was president of the
Royal Economic Society from 1958 to 1960. He was invited to give the
Rede lecture (on "Planning") in 1962. Hall retired shortly after Selwyn Lloyd's first budget in 1961. He was politically on the Left but thought Conservative governments managed the economy better. He favoured Keynesian deficit finance, but had grown increasingly worried about inflation. He had opposed ROBOT (the plan to float the pound in the early 1950s), but with the disappearance of the dollar shortage came to favour floating after all, although he never argued for it very strongly. He wanted an incomes policy, and came to feel that unemployment was too low and that British workers and managers were not efficient enough. He was principal of
Hertford College, Oxford, from 1964 to 1967. there were two daughters, Felicity and Anthea, to the marriage, which was dissolved in 1968. In the same year Hall married Perilla Thyme Nowell-Smith, a divorcee and daughter of
Sir Richard Southwell, FRS, who survived him. ==Publications==