Today sees the publication of “Think Tank – the Story of the Adam Smith Institute.” It was great fun writing this book because every day spent writing it was a walk down Memory Lane. The name on the book is precisely what you get, because it is above all a story. It’s a first person narrative of what it was like to return to Britain from the US and set up a new type of think tank without any resources or backing. We had to grow the Adam Smith Institute from nothing, and the story is an account of how it happened. From scavenging materials from builders’ skips to doing cover artwork with press-on lettering, it is (I hope) a light-hearted account of how we coped. I still shudder when I read about how we narrowly outwitted bailiffs and avoided the debtor’s prison that so coloured the life of Charles Dickens.
I tried to write an engaging and unpretentious account of what it was actually like to build up something that became a national institution, and I wanted to put across some of the excitement and struggle that it involved. Above all, I wanted to convey in its pages some of the fun and mischief that accompanied it.
The UK turned its back on state collectivism and socialism, and instead embraced markets, incentives and opportunities. The Adam Smith Institute was part of that story, and played an honourable role in helping to bring that about. “Think Tank” tells that story, and tries to do it in a readable and absorbing way.
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Madsen Pirie 