UNIVERSAL MAN

By Richard Davenport-Hines (William Collins)

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES is best remembered as an economist, but even he found economics ‘a technical and complicated subject’.

Luckily, this brilliant biography does not linger on Keynesian theories, but on the seven lives of the man behind them as altruist, boy prodigy, official, public man, lover, connoisseur and envoy.

In one role he went on artbuying sprees, once to Paris to buy Impressionist paintings for the National Gallery.

He came back with several works for himself — drawings by Degas, two by Delacroix, and a Cezanne in his suitcase.

‘It was too heavy for me to carry,’ he announced. ‘So I’ve left it in the ditch, behind the gate.’

Whether he is recounting tales of Keynes’s art splurges, revealing his membership of the secretive discussion group — the Apostles — while at Cambridge, or simply noting how much he detested nail biting, Davenport-Hines does an excellent job of bringing Keynes’s unfailing spirit and dynamism to life on the page.