Nick Hartley, who has died aged 80, was a revered economist and within the Nineteen Nineties served as head of vitality, economics and statistics on the Division of Commerce and Trade.
His fame was made as chief economist at Oftel (the Workplace of Telecommunications) for six years from 1984. He was then chief economist on the Division of the Surroundings (1990-94), earlier than changing into head of vitality, economics and statistics on the DTI, a submit, he preferred to level out, as soon as held by Harold Wilson. In 1996, Nick joined the financial consultancy Oxera, from the place he was seconded to the Cupboard Workplace to go up a report on vitality coverage.
Born in London, the one youngster of Nancy (nee Fulton), a dressmaker, and Edward Hartley, a publican, Nick went to St Clement Danes grammar college, Hammersmith, the place he and I met in 1955. Sitting aspect by aspect in meeting for the headteacher’s handle to the brand new boys, he launched himself: “Hi there, I’m Hartley, just like the jam.”
Within the sixth type we have been instructed by our economics trainer, Jack Harvey, to use to St Catharine’s Faculty, Cambridge, to review economics. We arrived in 1962 throughout a winter so chilly that the River Granta froze, and Nick and I might stroll on it to Grantchester.
After graduating, Nick handed the civil service examination and have become assistant principal on the Division for Training, the place he labored for JAR Pimlott organising polytechnics (1965-69). From there, he moved to the Treasury as an financial adviser (1969-84). He was seconded from the Treasury twice, in 1970-71 to do an MPhil at York College, and in 1974-77, to the Royal Fee on the Press.
Latterly he was a companion of the Guild of St George, a charity for arts and crafts based by John Ruskin who, Nick mentioned, “was asking all the proper questions on the way in which work and society ought to be organised”. Nick travelled all through Italy with Ruskin’s work in thoughts, and creative pursuits have been central to his life.
He wrote a number of books, together with The Prince of Privateers (2012), a lifetime of one among his forebears who was on the British aspect within the American battle of independence, and Monuments Officer (2012), a novel.
An enthusiastic theatregoer, as an undergraduate he performed Fortunate in a manufacturing of Ready for Godot. After listening to Bob Dylan’s second album in 1962 he grew to become a lifelong fan of the musician. He was additionally a eager reader of the journal Cahiers du Cinéma, so after watching a movie at Cambridge, whether or not Hammer horror or Truffaut, he would give notes on “auteur concept”.
The novelist and playwright Nigel Williams described Nick as having a “distinctive brisk theatricality”. Good phrases with which to protect my very own recollections of him, significantly because the briskness typically concerned the form of expansive gestures that put any wine glasses on a desk in danger.
Nick is survived by Jenny (nee Stern), whom he married in 1975, and by their sons, Ned and Gabriel, and granddaughters, Violet, Hazel and Hana.
