Keynes: The Man Who Saved the World from Ruin

By Richard Davenport-Hines

Published Oct 2014

In a series of vivid snapshots, Richard Davenport-Hines follows the life of one of the most important men of the 20th Century.

A lanky man in his twenties in Cambridge, among a secretive discussion group, laying the groundwork for a universal way of living the good life, while socialising amongst the glamorous Bloomsbury set.

A man of thirty, perched in the precarious side-car on 3 August 1914, on his way to single-handedly avert financial panic and monetary disarray in the first week of the war.

A promiscuous homosexual, pioneering conservationist, opera-lover.

A man in his fifties publishing in 1936 the most important economics book of the 20th century.

A dauntless man in his sixties, with weak heart, fighting daily, at interminable conferences in Washington DC, to save war-wrecked Britain from being driven into bankruptcy by the Americans, knowing that he is sacrificing his life in the effort, until one day he collapses.

Here is a colourful portrait of the man who showed Western industrialised states how to protect themselves from revolutionary unrest, economic instability, high unemployment and social dissolution, and who lived multiple lives at the highest level. John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is remembered as the Man who Saved the World from Ruin.