Biographie de Norman Macrae
Born 1923. RAF navigator 1942-45. Went up to Cambridge 1945. Firstclass honors in economics tripos, 1947. Did research and some teaching in economics at Cambridge in 1947-49, but left before completing Ph. D. because was already getting stuff published and wanted to get married. Joined The Economist in 1949, and apart from sabbaticals to write eight books and do a little consultancy was there until retirement in 1988. Assistant editor after 1954, and deputy editor after 1965. Have written over three thousand articles, mostly anonymous ones in The Economist, but have also lectured on five continents and written for other magazines around the world. The books published in America were The Neurotic Trillionaire, then Americas Third Century (these were originally my two surveys on the United States in The Economist, but Harcourt Brace Jovanovich reprinted them in the United States as paperbacks), and The 2025 Report: A Future History of 1975-2025 (published in America by Macmillan in 1985). I was a co-author of General Sir John Hackett's two books on World War III, which sold over three million copies worldwide; I wrote the chapters starting and ending the war, while the generals and admirals wrote the chapters fighting it.
Three surveys I have written on Japan, starting with one in 1962 which prophesied that they were the only country to have got economic policy right, have been published as books in Japan. In the Japanese emperor's birthday honors in 1988 I was given the Order of the Rising Sun with Gold Rays. In the same retirement year I was made a Commander of the British Empire in Queen Elizabeth's birthday honors.