In this informative study, Sally Sheard endeavours to demonstrate why Brian Abel-Smith should take his place alongside both his `intellectual godfather’ Richard Titmuss and his better known, more radical, associate Peter Townsend, as one of the most influential pioneers of the post-war study and practice of social policy and administration. Sheard provides some compelling testimony in support of this hypothesis. For instance, Abel-Smith's early work as a researcher on the Guillebaud Committee in 1956, which suggested that the NHS was, contrary to the beliefs of some Conservative sceptics, in need of more, rather than less public funding, helped to ensure that this fledgling institution became more firmly rooted in British society. His collaboration with Peter Townsend on The Poor and the Poorest in 1962 led to the ‘rediscovery of poverty’ and highlighted the need for increased scrutiny of the impact of the post-war welfare state, while his work as a special advisor, first with Richard Crossman and subsequently with Barbara Castle, in the 1960s and 1970s was instrumental in ensuring the eventual passage of improved state pension arrangements. His joint work on the legal system with Robert Stevens led to ‘better training for judges’ and an expanded legal aid system (p. 214), while in the area of health care Abel-Smith was able to use his consummate networking, research and policy making skills to influence the development of health policy and practice at both a national and international level, not least in shaping the WHO Health for All by the Year 2000 initiative.

Abel-Smith's chosen career and ‘unwavering commitment to socialism’ (p. 6) seems curious given his upper-class lineage. He was born into one of England's ‘longest established banking families’ (though his own father, Lionel, served in the army as a Brigadier-General), and was educated at Haileybury – a public school co-founded by a family member in 1862, which was also the much-loved alma mater of Clement Attlee. After national service, which included a spell as an aide-de-camp to General Winterton in Vienna, where his ‘intuitive appreciation of social etiquette’ proved invaluable for ‘organising and attending parties’ (p. 35), Abel Smith continued his education at Cambridge first as an undergraduate in economics and subsequently as a research student, which brought him into contact with the redoubtable Joan Robinson, ‘who proved a role model for his later career’ (p. 50).

Sheard suggests that Abel-Smith's leftward turn, albeit firmly on the ‘champagne, jugged hare, skiing at Davos’, wing of the socialist movement, was linked to a deep sense of public duty which had been inculcated at Haileybury and reinforced by his first-hand observations of the hardships that many of his fellow citizens were forced to endure in the blitzed neighbourhoods of wartime London. Stimulating encounters with Labour luminaries such as Hugh Dalton, Donald Chapman (the then General Secretary of the Fabian Society), and with Richard Titmuss (who had been appointed as the first Professor of Social Administration at the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1950) during his time at Cambridge served to confirm that the democratic socialist family was his intended spiritual home.

Declining Dalton's offer to become his ‘successor’ as Labour MP for Bishop Auckland in 1957 on the understandable grounds that his homosexuality might be exposed leaving him prone to criminal prosecution and the potential ‘despoilment’ of the family name, Abel-Smith opted instead to continue with his academic career at the LSE (he had been appointed by Titmuss as an assistant lecturer in 1955), a role he subsequently combined with that of a special government advisor and consultant. Although Abel-Smith had become relatively well known in the public realm as a result of a growing media profile (he appeared, for example, in a number of current affairs broadcasts including Panaroma and Tonight), he was very much the backroom ‘boffin’, albeit one who enjoyed being entrusted to offer advice regarding nominations for appointments to official bodies. He suggested, for example, that his old Cambridge friend Geoffrey Howe should oversee the official inquiry into the Ely hospital scandal in 1967 and recommended that the `less aggressive’ and better-informed Ruth Lister was to be preferred to Frank Field for inclusion on a Labour Party Social Policy Sub-Committee in the mid-1970s. He also clearly relished the role of being a special adviser so much so that he offered his services to Barbara Castle's ministerial successor at the Department of Health and Social Security, David Ennals, with, what his predecessor clearly regarded as, indecent haste.

Given that Abel Smith spent much of his long career exploring the economic and administrative structures of health services, both at home and abroad, it is not surprising that Sheard chose to devote a considerable part of her volume to his activities in this sphere, though some of the minutiae that she elected to include are only likely to appeal to aspiring ‘airport’ professors and international policy consultants rather than the general reader. Abel Smith's antipathy to speculative theorising (a key feature of British social administration – see Mishra, Reference Mishra1977) with his consequent overestimation of the benevolent potential of ‘impartial’ social scientific research evidence for policy formation and practice (a ‘shortcoming’ shared by some of his successors at the LSE) proved to be problematic not least in relation to his somewhat uncritical response to the neo-liberal inspired reforms of the NHS in the 1980s and 1990s.

The muted academic criticisms of Abel-Smith's apparent ‘volte face’ in relation to contentious issues such as choice and competition can be explained in part by the deep affection and esteem in which he was held by virtually all of those he came into contact with. Abel Smith had a razor sharp mind, being able instantly to cut to the chase of an issue with crystal clarity. He had, as Sheard notes, an engaging personality and was generous with his time and advice for students, politicians and researchers alike, often drafting lengthy responses to papers and policy documents.

Readers will be fascinated by Sheard's forays into other less publicised aspects of Abel Smith's life, which he compartmentalised so effectively. He loved to cook and entertain, usually in the company of his long-term partner John Sarbutt (a part-time actor and landscape gardener) both in London and latterly at their country retreat, Tanglewood, in Kent. Abel Smith had a keen eye for fashion and interior design, opening a clothing shop (Just Men) in London in 1965 with patrons such as Mick Jagger, Julie Christie, Pete Townsend, Keith Moon and Joan Collins.

Sheard might have delved more deeply into the question of the impact that Abel Smith and his fellow social administrators have had upon British social policy. Can the incremental advances that principled ‘tinker men’ such as Abel-Smith helped to secure in spheres such as social security and health policy ever form part of a transformative social strategy or are they destined, at best, to rub away merely the roughest of inegalitarian edges? Is the social administrator, even a passionate one, more akin to the enthusiastic weekend mechanic forever tuning the engine of the family car but rarely motoring far beyond the end of the road? For a ‘conviction’ incrementalist like Abel-Smith, such critiques were to be firmly rebuffed. He believed that concerted state action could bring about enhanced ‘standards of welfare for working people’ and for ‘minority groups in every social class’. In this clearly written and wide-ranging volume, Sheard provides powerful evidence as to why Brian Abel-Smith, through his incisive and influential contributions to the development of health and social welfare policy both in Britain and further afield, should be regarded as one of the titans of post-1945 social administration.