John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge in 1883. His father, John Neville Keynes was an economist who taught at Cambridge University. His mother, Florence Keynes had been educated at Newnham College, Cambridge and was the city's first woman mayor.

Educated at Eton, Keynes won a scholarship in classics and mathematics at King's College, Cambridge. Interested in literature and philosophy, Keynes was invited to join the Apostles, a small, secret society of dons and undergraduates who met to discuss ethical and political issues. The group included Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster and Bertrand Russell. His friendship with Woolf and Russell brought him into contact with leaders of the Fabian Society, including Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw.

When Keynes graduated in 1905 he took up a career in the Civil Service. He gained a Fellowship at King's College in 1909 and as well as teaching Keynes' began writing on economic issues. He became editor of the Economic Journal in 1911 and his first book Indian Currency and Finance was published in 1913.

Keynes was a pacifist but wanted to contribute to Britain's war effort. He eventually decided to join the Treasury Department of the Civil Service that was dealing with the financial side of the First World War. According to Kingsley Martin, his fellow conscientious objector, Bertrand Russell, claimed that Keynes' work at the Treasury "consisted of finding ways of killing the maximum number of Germans at the minimum expense".

By 1919 Keynes was the senior Treasury official sent as part of the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. John Maynard Keynes totally disagreed with the harsh terms negotiated at Versailles and after resigning returned to England and wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919).

The book was very controversial and although many disagreed with his conclusions, it brought him a great deal of attention. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes argued that the war reparations imposed on Germany could not be paid. This he warned, would led to further conflict in Europe.

Although Keynes continued to teach at Cambridge University he also contributed a great number of articles to various newspapers and magazines. In 1923 he became chairman of the Liberal journal, The Nation and used it as a vehicle to attack the economic policies of Stanley Baldwin and his Conservative Government. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill came under attack for his decision to return Britain to the gold standard.

In 1925 John Maynard Keynes married the ballerina, Lydia Lopokova, and moved to Tilton, a farmhouse near Firle in Sussex. Other members of the Bloomsbury Group, Virgina Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, and Duncan Grant also lived in the area.

Keynes visited Russia in 1926. He was interested in the economic measures being taken by the communist regime and when he returned to England he wrote The End of Laissez-Faire. After the onset on the Depression in 1929, Keynes began to address the problems of unemployment. In a series of articles, The Means to Prosperity, written in The Times, Keynes argued that the government should "spend its way out of the depression".

In 1936 Keynes published his most important book A General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. It revolutionized economic theory by showing how unemployment could occur involuntarily. In the book Keynes argued that the lack of demand for goods and rising unemployment could be countered by increased government expenditure to stimulate the economy. His views on the planned economy influenced President Roosevelt's New Deal and Britain's post-war Labour Government.

Keynes was extremely active in his campaign to encourage the government to take more responsibility for running the economy. In 1931 he agreed an amalgamation of the Nation with the New Statesman, a journal owned by the Fabian Society. Keynes now became a regular contributor to what was now Britain's leading intellectual weekly.

During the Second World War Keynes was an unpaid advisor to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and wrote the influential How to Pay for the War (1940). He attended the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and the Savannah Conference in 1946. He was also involved in the negotiations on Lend-Lease and the US loan to Britain. John Maynard Keynes, who had suffered from heart problems for many years, died on 21st April 1946.

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