Universal Man - The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes Book

From the bestselling and award-winning author of ‘An English Affair’, a dazzlingly original thematic biography which throws fresh light on the greatest economist of the twentieth century.

John Maynard Keynes is the man who saved Britain from financial crisis not once but twice – over the course of two World Wars. He remains a highly influential figure, nearly 70 years after his death. But who was he?

In this entertaining biography, Richard Davenport-Hines gives us the man behind the economics: the connoisseur, intellectual, public official and statesman who was equally at ease socialising with the Bloomsbury Group as he was persuading prime ministers and presidents.

By exploring the desires and experiences that made Keynes think as he did, Davenport-Hines reveals the aesthetic basis of Keynesian economics, and explores why the ideas of this Great Briton continue to resonate so powerfully today.

Keynes's early romantic and sexual relationships were exclusively with men and had been in relationships while at Eton and Cambridge; significant among these early partners were Dilly Knox and Daniel Macmillan. He was open about his affairs, and from 1901 to 1915 kept separate diaries in which he tabulated his many sexual encounters

‘Succinct, lively and well-written biography … Done with great panache, in a volume that will introduce Keynes and his strange world to a new generation of readers’ Evening Standard

‘An amusing, elegant and provocative writer … great fun. By focusing on Keynes as a private man and public figure rather than an academic economist, it is possible to see him as the last and greatest flowering of Edwardian Liberalism’
Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

‘A treat… We read endlessly about Keynes the economist. But he was so much more and this unputdownable book explores the man’
Independent

‘Treating Keynes’s lives as interesting and valuable for their own sake gives them extra vividness … With a keen eye for telling detail and social connections, Davenport-Hines brilliantly conveys what one might call the peripheral atmospherics of Keynes’s existence … Done with grace and insight’
Robert Skidelsky, Observer

‘This thoughtful biography does justice both to Keynes’s idiosyncrasies and to his influence … with wit and grace, as well as a good deal of scholarly digging … incisive and thoughtful … The book conveys its own vision of this wholly extraordinary and undeniably idiosyncratic figure with persuasive artistry and conviction’
Financial Times