Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, John Maynard Keynes

From HM Treasury to Versailles and Bloomsbury: a look at the life and legacy of JM Keynes.

Keynesianism changed economics the world over, but what of JM Keynes's influence on the arts and his philanthropy? Why does an economist continue to excite the imagination?

JM Keynes and his theory, Keynesianism, is central to the financial history of 20th century. However, he is also central to its cultural history. Keynes was not only an economist, but a man equally concerned with aesthetics and ethics; as interested in the ballet as he was with the stock market crash. Anne McElvoy talks to Robert Hudson about the musical drama has written about the political trading behind the Treaty of Versailles from Keynes's perspective. How does looking again at Keynes life and work offer us a different view of the man and his times?         

Zachary D. Carter is a Writer in Residence with the Omidyar Network's Reimagining Capitalism initiative and the author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes. 

Robert Hudson is the author of Hall of Mirrors a musical based on JM Keynes's experiences at the Paris Peace Conference. His other work includes Magnitsky the Musical https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000d6yy 

Adam Tooze is Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor History at Columbia University and he serves as Director of the European Institute. His books include: Shutdown: how COVID-19 shook the world's economy; Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World; and, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931. 

Emma West is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Birmingham and her current research project, Revolutionary Red Tape, examines how public servants and official committees helped to produce and popularise modern British culture.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Image: JM Keynes. Credit: Getty Images

Hall of Mirrors is the Drama on 3 Sunday 27th March 2022 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnwj

You can find other episodes of Free Thinking exploring economic ideas:
  
Economics: Liam Byrne, John Redwood, Luke Johnson, Juliet Michaelson and Matt Wolf https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03qbv3q

Mandeville's View of 18th-century Economics https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b040hysk 

Coins, going cashless and the magic money tree  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s2v5

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rd97

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