There are many books about Keynes, and I’ve read quite a few of them. The first was Roy Harrod’s authorised biography, [amazon_link id=”0140214402″ target=”_blank” ]The Life of John Maynard Keynes[/amazon_link], set for me to read the summer before going to university. It was coy about his personal life but a good introduction to the economics. Later I read the superb [amazon_link id=”033357379X” target=”_blank” ]three volume biography[/amazon_link] by Robert Skidelsky, since shortened into a one volume version, and followed up with [amazon_link id=”0141043601″ target=”_blank” ]Keynes: Return of the Master[/amazon_link]. More recently there was the excellent [amazon_link id=”0674057759″ target=”_blank” ]Capitalist Revolutionary[/amazon_link] by Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman, and [amazon_link id=”026202831X” target=”_blank” ]Keynes: Useful Economics for the World Economy [/amazon_link]by Temin and Vines. And on Keynes’s role in the post-war international monetary order another two terrific books, Benn Steil’s [amazon_link id=”0691149097″ target=”_blank” ]The Battle of Bretton Woods[/amazon_link] and Ed Conway’s [amazon_link id=”034913961X” target=”_blank” ]The Summit[/amazon_link].
[amazon_image id=”0393300242″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Life of John Maynard Keynes[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0141043601″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Keynes: The Return of the Master[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0674057759″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes[/amazon_image]
[amazon_image id=”026202831X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Keynes: Useful Economics for the World Economy[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”0691149097″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Council on Foreign Relations Books (Princeton University Press))[/amazon_image] [amazon_image id=”034913961X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The Summit: The Biggest Battle of the Second World War – fought behind closed doors[/amazon_image]
The latest to join the list is [amazon_link id=”000751980X” target=”_blank” ]Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes[/amazon_link] by Richard Davenport-Hines. And although it’s familiar territory, I did enjoy reading it and found some new insights. This is not just because there is a whole chapter on Keynes’s sex life, not the focus of previous books. The section about the Versailles Treaty prompted reflection, in the current European context – and I hadn’t before known that The Economic Consequences of the Peace had influenced T.S.Eliot’s [amazon_link id=”0871407175″ target=”_blank” ]The Waste Land[/amazon_link]. The section on the Macmillan Report sent me to the trade statistics, claiming the UK hadn’t had a trade in goods surplus between 1822 and 1934 – a glance at the Bank of England’s Three Centuries of Data resource suggests this is largely true, bar odd years. There is a great vignette of Stone and Meade working on the first national income accounts in a Treasury cubby hole during the war with, literally, a quill pen and a hand calculator.
[amazon_image id=”B00LZGBGM4″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes[/amazon_image]
I also liked the chapter on Keynes’s role in the arts. There’s much about him that is unappealing to me – the Eton and Bloomsbury poshness and superiority. But his success in bringing the highest quality, most ambitious arts to the people redeems that, through the establishment of the Arts Council and other interventions. It’s amusing to read that Customs & Excise taxed entertainment but not art (cinema and popular plays but not opera) and had a tussle with Keynes over whether Euripides and Ibsen should be considered ‘entertainments’ and so liable to tax. Keynes was also keen for the BBC to ensure its arts broadcasts covered the whole of the country, not just metropolitan works, when its regional broadcasts resumed after the war. “Nothing can be more damaging than the excessive prestige of metropolitan standards and fashions.” Indeed.
And I hadn’t known Keynes helped the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, write the marvellously radical economic parts of his 1942 bestseller [amazon_link id=”B001KPS6YG” target=”_blank” ]Christianity and the Social Order[/amazon_link]: minimum housing, education and employment standards, regional devolution, worker representatives on company boards, nationalisation of the banks, public ownership of land for development for housing, and restrictions on mortgage borrowing. The book sold 139,000 copies and Davenmport-Hines calls it, “Perhaps the most read Keynesian tract of all.” It sounds a radical programme now, as it evidently was in 1945 as well.
[amazon_image id=”B00SLTKX04″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Christianity and Social Order: Written by William Temple, 1984 Edition, (New Ed) Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd [Paperback][/amazon_image]