A critical woman : Barbara Wootton, social science and public policy in the twentieth century / / Ann Oakley.

• Author: Oakley, Ann.
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (xix, 426 p., [16] p. of plates ); ill., ports.

This is a fascinating biography of Barbara Wootton, one of the extraordinary public figures of the 20th century. She was an outstanding social scientist, an architect of the welfare state, an iconoclast who challenged conventional wisdoms and the first woman to sit on the woolsack in the House of Lords. Barbara Wootton was one of the extraordinary public figures of the twentieth century. She was an outstanding social scientist, an architect of the welfare state, an iconoclast who challenged conventional wisdoms and the first woman to sit on the Woolsack in the House of Lords. Ann Oakley has written a fascinating and highly readable account of the life and work of this singular woman, but the book goes much further. It is an engaged account of the making of British social policy at a critical period seen through the lens of the life and work of a pivotal figure. Oakley tells a story about the intersections of the public and the private and about the way her subject's life unfolded within, was shaped by, and helped to shape a particular social and intellectual context.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Writing a Life of Barbara Wootton 1. Ladies of the House 2. A Cat Called Plato 3. Alma Mater 4. Jack 5. Cambridge Distinctions 6. Real Work 7. Fact and Fiction 8. George 9. Planning for Peace 10. Lament for Economics 11. Testament for Social Science 12. The Nuffield Years, and Vera 13. High Barn, and the Other Barbara 14. Crime and Penal Policy 15. Madam Speaker 16. Incurable Patient 17. In the World She Never Made