Keynes appears with speaking parts in all three of my Addlestone Chronicles historical novels. In these, James and Louise are Cambridge undergraduate students in 1934. James studies Maths at King’s College, and Louise studies Modern Languages at Newnham College.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Keynes served as Bursar of King’s College, Cambridge, and as an advisor to His Majesty’s Governments. He is universally acknowledged as the most influential economist of the 20th century. In 1936, he published his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Opposing the prevailing view that government should act as a neutral referee, he proposed a proactive role, advocating for rules to prevent anti-competitive behavior and addressing the consequences of disruptive business cycles. Keynes argued that deficit spending could end economic slowdowns and recessions and mitigate the damage caused by the Great Depression.
This perspective contrasted sharply with the disastrous one-term presidency of Republican Herbert Hoover, who attempted to cut government expenditure and increase taxes during an economic downturn, directly contributing to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
In 1919, Keynes advised the British Government during the drafting of the Versailles Treaty, which sought to impose reparations on the defeated German government after World War I. Presciently, Keynes believed the Treaty’s draconian reparations provisions would lead to another war with Germany within 20 years. For this perceived “disloyalty” to the British establishment, he was removed from the delegation. Back at King’s, he wrote the influential and accessible pamphlet The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
In the 1930s, Keynes regularly traveled across the Atlantic to advise President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In July 1944, as WWII neared its end and victory was in sight, Keynes was the prime mover at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire. This conference established the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a policy of fixed but flexible international exchange rates to facilitate post-war reconstruction. Keynes was a staunch proponent of free trade, opposing tariffs except where necessary to protect infant industries in developing countries.
Keynes was also a pioneer in advocating for women’s rights. He frequently lectured on the importance of contraception and served as vice president of the Marie Stopes Society for Constructive Birth Control.
Bertrand Russell said of Keynes: “He is the sharpest and clearest mind I ever knew. When I argued with him, I felt like my life was hanging by a thread, and I rarely ended up feeling anything other than stupid.”
Keynes was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, an influential circle of English writers, intellectuals, and philosophers active in the early 1920s. Other members of the group included E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf.
Keynes died of a heart attack in April 1946, at the age of 62.