Keynes (Life & Times) [Paperback]

That must be, surely, Keynes's most famous statement, and it's rightly famous. Before we get anywhere near the economic arguments in any technical sense, this simple insight tells economists what their job is. Their job is not, (labouring the point), to inform us how the various economic trends and processes will achieve equilibrium if we just give them long enough to work themselves out. The days of a man's life are threescore years and ten - if the man is lucky enough: Keynes did not live that long - and we ain't got that much time to give them. The high ground in any kind of argument can sometimes be achieved just by loudly asserting a claim to it, but the ultimate decider is often what Harold Macmillan called `Events, dear boy, events'. If the events were the 1930's slump, then that was bad luck for Friedrich von Hayek and his view that the strategy for economic bad times was to fold your arms and wait until they got better. Keynes had a better proposal.

I suppose this little book is a bit of a noddy-guide, but if so I would call it quite a good one. Robert Cord is plainly in command of the basic facts, including summary versions of the disputations that Keynes got into at frequent intervals. He is slightly prone to describe certain academics as `the most...' this that or the next, which is unwise. Try getting any gathering of economists to assent to any such simplistic proposition as that. However he is not so foolish as to try to describe Keynes himself as some `greatest economist' of the 20th century, or of the Christian era or any such jejune proclamation. What he does take as widely agreed is that Keynes inaugurated a new era in political economics, and that surely takes a bit of gainsaying.

What could put you off this book is a slightly odd and awkward style in the earlier chapters, less so in the later. Obviously such a short book cannot go into too much detail on every issue, but what the style sometimes reminded me of was obituaries in a college magazine - something, alas, that I have experience of writing. In particular there are insets printed in a nearly indecipherable pink giving potted accounts of some person place or thing that features in the accompanying text. How about `Eton is a famous English public school for boys'; or `Michal Kalecki was arguably the greatest all-round economist of the 20th century'; or `King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and their two daughters, Princesses Elizabeth (the present Queen...)'? Who, really, does Mr Cord think he is talking to? One rather entertaining case where I might have enjoyed some more detail is in respect of Keynes's less intellectual side. Mr Cord informs us, rather pompously I thought, that Sir Roy `Harrod wrote the first full-length biography of Keynes which, although competently written, glossed over various aspects of Keynes's life, in particular his homosexuality.' Cord has a couple of brief references to Keynes's membership of the Cambridge `Apostles' club which was `known for its homosexual tendencies around this time.' However Cord is, I fear, no fun at all about this, although he does at least confirm that `Three decades on, Keynes still clung to...the notion that love, beauty and truth should come before all else.' With thoughts such as these is it any wonder that Keynes became an economist?

What I like about this book is that it gets its balance right. There is a certain amount about the great man's personality and personal life, but the bulk of it is about what Keynes is significant for. The account of the academic toing and froing is nicely judged, I thought. Keynes did not get the best of every duel or get unfailingly flattering reviews by any means. Also, there was luck as well as merit in the achievement: he was often just at the right time in delivering his insights for them to be listened to. As I have just relegated the significance of personality behind that of intellect, I should take a step backwards and compliment Mr Cord for his entirely proper stress on the impact that Keynes's seemingly charismatic personality often had in winning over opinion.

In my own opinion we are all deeply in his debt. We're all dead in the long run, and the thing about managing an economy is to get it to deliver for us while we're still here, and to dig us out of pits we manage to get into. It is not some ivory tower academic exercise, and the irony is that it was this eburnean aesthete who had the best practical grasp of that matter, so far as the rest of us are concerned. Sit ei terra levis.

This really is a well written and presented book. It offers well-rounded insight into the life and work of an economic phenomenon. It demonstrates how Keynes' economic ideas formed and subsequently took hold, even though those of his equally bright rivals did not. In that respect it's like Gladwell's 'Tipping Point' - but for Economics.

But the book isn't just about Economics. It's about Keynes' remarkable personal life - including friendship, financial gain and ruin and his role in founding the Arts Council.

This is an insightful and inspirational read.