Conclusion: Summer 1984

Abstract

I left the Bank at the end of February 1984. The six months before that was a period of gradual disengagement. I did each thing for the penultimate or the last time, as the case might be; thought how to ease the way for my successor; and was increasingly taken up with plans for my own future and for the book to be written when I left. In the six months since then I have been able to guess the internal story, but heard little of it direct and in detail; and thinking and writing about economic policy has involved a distancing of myself from the present. I am therefore no longer able, nor do I wish, to write as in previous summers. All that remains is to set down some brief final notes.