UNIVERSAL MAN: THE SEVEN LIVES OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES . by Richard Davenport-Hines . (William Collins £18.99) Keynes is a great name from our past, yet a vague one. An economic guru between the wars whose radical ideas helped to end the Great Depression and who then fought the Americans for us in the harsh, ungrateful bargaining after the end of World War II about who should pay for it. Keynes (right) with his Russian ballerina wife, Lydia Lopokova (left) No one but economists read Keynes’ books and the controversies they created — because nobody but economists can bear to read about such ‘a technical and difficult subject’, as he called it himself. Daringly but sensibly, this renowned biographer, Davenport-Hines, has studied Keynes from seven points of view — not one of them as an economist. There is so much more left to say about him with this left out. He was a man who simply simmered with alpha qualities, and could have done just about anything. He settled for being a great economist, a pillar of Cambridge University, a distinguished higher civil servant, a successful market speculator, a popular writer and journalist, a dealer in modern art who helped to restock the National Gallery, a theatre impresario who provided Cambridge with its Arts Theatre, a restorer of Covent Garden Opera House to ballet from a wartime dance hall. Oh, and he farmed on his estate in Sussex. Presiding over his versatility was Keynes’ amazing mind. To quote no lesser an authority than Bertrand Russell: ‘Keynes’ intellect was the sharpest and clearest I have ever known. Annihilating argument darted out of him with the swiftness of an adder’s tongue.’ For recreation away from all this cerebral activity, Keynes was an active and unapologetic homosexual for his younger years. Then he converted spectacularly to become the devoted husband of a glamorous Russian ballerina. He didn’t disapprove of making money, but he saw it as something to spend. Money spent oiled the capitalist system; hoarding it gummed up the works and caused recurring crises. On himself: ‘I have a clever head, a weak character, an affectionate disposition and a repulsive appearance . . . I am so physically repulsive that I’ve no business to hurl my body on anyone else’s.’ But he did — and some of the most surprising pages of this book are devoted to Keynes the lover and sexual cruiser on the pick-up. You would not have guessed it, because the cover-up was so careful, but the Cambridge of Keynes’ pre-World War I years was a hotbed of sexuality of the most refined kind. A secret society called The Apostles (of self-elected alpha minds) held meetings at which they prided themselves on learned papers rejecting conventional moral values. ‘We are the Immoralists,’ said Keynes. Keynes' (pictured) radical ideas helped end the Great Depression and he then fought the Americans at the end of World War II about who should pay for it . Returning after two years’ absence, he commented, excitedly: ‘The thing has come on by leaps and bounds to the point where practically everybody in Cambridge is an open and avowed Sodomite!’ The Apostles were responsible for distinguishing between the Higher and the Lower Sodomy. Of the Higher kind, to which they aspired, the feelings of the lovers were so intense that they precluded any physical carryings-on. Keynes entered into ‘love’ triangles with such Bloomsbury names as Lytton Strachey and his brother. The spectacle of two men who both hated their appearances equally — Lytton was tall, ungainly, with a tuft of red beard, glasses and a shrill voice, matched by Keynes, whom Virginia Woolf described as ‘a gorged seal, double chin, ledge of red lip, little eyes, central, brutal, unimaginative’ — well, it is hardly appetising. Keynes’ encounters in Cambridge were all discreet and confined within the colleges, but he took rooms in Bloomsbury for adventurous sallies on the streets. He kept accounts of his pick-ups. There was none of the Higher Sodomy here. They would read: ‘Stable Boy of Park Lane, Swede of the National Gallery, The Soldier of the Baths, the young American near the British Museum.’ Also listed were the clergyman, the Baron, the Irish nobleman of the Whitechapel Baths, the Grand Duke Cyril of the Paris Baths. No names, you’ll notice. Anonymity was part of the attraction of the pick-up. The other thing missing from his notes is any kind of guilt. Keynes enjoyed his hazardous sex life. He compiled statistics of his encounters, which averaged about 60 a year, with obvious satisfaction, as if they were cricket scores. They came to an end when he fell seriously in love with Duncan Grant, the painter of the Bloomsbury Set who had long been the lover of Lytton Strachey. Strachey let out a hyena scream of pain when he found out. With his brother, James, he set about demolishing Keynes’ reputation. Strangely enough, it was Keynes’ love for Duncan Grant, who then had a love affair with Virginia Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, that changed him in the same direction. He started paying court to Lydia Lopokova, who had arrived in London as a star of the Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. It was three years before they got together at a country house party and were swiftly married with Duncan Grant as best man. Keynes never slept with a man again. His wife, known as Loppy to his friends, proved an ideal companion — intuitive instead of intellectual, slightly dotty, full of unexpected charm and pranks. She looked after Keynes, who began showing symptoms of a weak heart. Although Keynes was an active and unapologetic homosexual during his younger years, he never slept with a man again after he married ballerina, Lydia Lopokova . He overworked at the Treasury throughout World War II, but his great contributions were still to come as it ended. The first problem was the chaos of world trade now that it was dominated completely by a reinvigorated America. This was averted by setting up the Bretton Woods trade agreement, a World Bank and an International Monetary Fund — all Keynes’ ideas. It took the Americans some little time to appreciate that, in Keynes, they were not dealing with another English grandee, like his fellow negotiator Lord Halifax, but with the fastest brain in the West. Keynes knew that Britain was broke, having sold our assets and cleaned out our reserves to survive the war. The welfare plans of the Attlee government were at stake if the U.S. didn’t provide the finance. There was no American inclination to go easy on their ally, who had held the fort against Hitler. They still saw Britain as the hated imperial power they had rebelled against in 1776. So no cancellation of our debts was forthcoming. At last, the loan that Keynes was working for would be granted — but at interest of 2 per cent for the rest of the century, which is what it took us to pay it off. Worn out by meetings and speeches, Keynes limped home to England with Loppy on the Queen Mary, only to die in her arms at their country house a few weeks later. His last services to his country were made. Seven views of a man do not always add up neatly. Much as one must admire Keynes, there lingers a suspicion that he was, with reason, very arrogant and impatient with inferiors, never really at home either with his club men in Whitehall or disreputable Bloomsbury circle. Nevertheless, a rewarding and fascinating book.
John Maynard Keynes' radical ideas helped end the Great Depression . He was an active and unapologetic homosexual in his younger years . But Keynes later went on to marry Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopokova .