The eighteen years when William Beveridge was Director of the LSE, saw some of the School's greatest expansion. The years between the wars presented a number of problems discussed in this book, such as those of finding space in the heart of London, of the proper scope and method of economics, of academic self-government and of political activity by university readers of social sciences. The last chapter tells of the author's forty years of friendship with Sidney and Beatrice Webb, using letters between him and them that had not been published before publication of this book in 1960.