Keynes and the Cambridge Economics School

As Alec (later Sir Alec) Cairncross, a fellow postgraduate student who became a close life-long friend of Singer, later recalled, Cambridge was unfamiliar territory to which it took some time to get accustomed (Cairncross, in Sapsford and Chen, 1998a, p. 12). The Singers’ social life was restricted by their limited financial means reduced further by the fact that they had to rent furnished accommodation. They soon made friends from among university colleagues and the increasing number of refugees who had come to Cambridge. Singer took dinner twice or three times a week in college and immersed himself in his studies, ever conscious of the limited time he had to complete his PhD studies, and of taking full advantage of the wealth of outstanding talent which surrounded him. Up to 1935, the Singers and other refugees regarded their status as temporary and lived in the hope that Hitler would soon be overthrown. Up to that time, Singer harboured the idea of returning to Bonn after he had completed his PhD studies and taking up a university appointment. Thereafter, they realized that Nazism had become widespread and deep-rooted and return to Germany could not be contemplated in the near future. By that time, they were beginning to feel at home in the new surroundings.