Keynes appears with speaking parts in all three Addlestone Chronicles novels.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Keynes was Bursar of King’s College, Cambridge and served 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. This focussed on the causes and remedies of disruptive business cycles. An opponent of the existing view that the role of government should be like a neutral referee, he proposed an active role whereby anti-competitive rules would be enacted and deficit spending could end economic slowdowns, recessions, and even mitigate the damage caused by the Great Depression. In 1919, he advised the British Government when they formulating the Versailles Treaty. It was drafted to enable reparations to be placed on the defeated German government in World War I. Keynes was prescient. He felt that if the Treaty, with the draconian provisions for reparations, would lead to another war with Germany within 20 years. For this ‘disloyalty’ to the British establishment, he was removed from the delegation. Back at King’s, he penned the influential and readable pamphlet, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. He regularly advised FDR in the 1930s. In July 1944, as WWII was coming to a close and victory was in sight, he was the prime mover at the Bretton Woods conference in New Hampshire. There, the World Bank, the IMF, and the agreed policy of fixed but flexible international exchange rates was established to enable post-war reconstruction. He was also a pioneer of women’s rights. He frequently lectured on the use 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 died at the age of 62 in April 1949 of a heart attack.