Essays in her Honour

A volume of essays in honour of Barbara Wootton and her work was published in 1986, called Barbara Wootton: Social Science and Public Policy, Essays in Her Honour, and edited by Philip Bean and David Whynes. She was then 89.

The book was presented to her at a party held in the House of Lords. It contains essays covering her work in social planning, economics, social work and crime and justice by experts and colleagues, and an introduction by O. R. McGregor, who had worked with her at Bedford College, called 'Champion of the impossible', a title taken from the last paragraph of her autobiography: 'Again and again,' she records there, 'I have had the satisfaction of seeing the laughable idealism of one generation evolve into the accepted commonplace of the next. But it is from the champions of the impossible rather than the slaves of the possible that evolution draws its creative force.'