Charles Read (historian)

Charles Read AFHEA FRHistS FRSA
Born	London, England
Occupation(s)	Historian and academic
Academic background
Alma mater	Christ's College, Cambridge
Academic work
Discipline	Economic history
Institutions	Corpus Christi College, Cambridge Regent's Park College, Oxford

Charles Read is a British economic historian based at the University of Oxford.

Read briefly appeared in national media in February 2023 in relation to the September 2022 United Kingdom mini-budget, after he stated in a Twitter thread that a lecture he had given to a civil service body, as well as a letter he had written to Kwasi Kwarteng on a historical February 1847 budget, should have been seen as a warning for the Truss government to avoid its subsequent collapse. The Twitter thread was briefly mentioned in an article about Truss' collapse in The Guardian and referenced in other UK media.

Career

Read was born in London and is of English, Welsh, Armenian and Ethiopian ancestry. He completed his BA, MPhil and PhD degrees focussed on economic history at Christ's College, Cambridge.

He was previously a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, teaching economics and history. He also served as Junior Proctor of the University for the 2023/24 academic year. He is currently a fellow at Regent's Park College, Oxford. He is also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Royal Society of Arts. Read further lists himself as having written and edited for The Economist.

Academic work

Read has published two books. "The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain's Financial Crisis" (2022) challenges the idea that the severity of the Irish famine was the result of British colonialism and laissez-faire ideas. It argues much of the death toll was the result of austerity the British government was forced to impose after the February 1847 budget that announced borrowing to expand spending on relief triggered the financial panic of 1847.

"Calming the storms: the Carry Trade, the Banking School and British Financial Crises since 1825" (2023) discusses British financial crises over the past two hundred years, focusing on carry trade and monetary policy. In the book, Read argues severe banking crises in Britain disappeared after 1866 as the Bank of England used monetary policy to prevent carry trade from causing instability. He further argues the Bank of England dropping these policies with the advent of competition and credit control in 1971 is the reason for the secondary banking crisis in 1973–75, the 2007–2008 financial crisis and mini-budget crisis of 2022. An article by a business and human interest journalist in a local Cambridge paper stated Read aims to stake a claim to be 'Cambridge's avatar economist for the 21st century'.

Liz Truss and September Mini Budget

Read is primarily known for a Twitter post that received a thousand four hundred shares, in which he stated a lecture he gave to civil servants and a letter he had chosen to write to Kwasi Kwarteng in September 2022 about the problems the UK faced in 1847, comparing the historical situation with the present, contradicts Liz Truss' claim that she had not been formally warned about the effects of the budget. The letter was unsolicited, and Read did not advise the government in any way at the time, having cold contacted the government as a relatively junior and unknown academic.

Read has further claimed that he foresaw the collapse (though it is pointed out in his local news interview that "Dr Read didn’t know that Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget would inflict so much damage on the UK in September because the final text for Great Famine was signed off in June and published in October").