Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
He was at one time director of the IMF and he sort of fell in love with Keynes. This is a wonderful collection of essays about different aspects of Keynes’s life. He deals with Keynes not just as an economist but as a philosopher and a moralist. This book shows his range of interests and his contribution to 20th-century thought. I thought this might be a good moment to say: “Read that if you want a broader view of Keynes in the 20th century.” In addition to my classic, of course.
And the Chandavarkar book?
He is not well-known. He was at one time director of the IMF and he sort of fell in love with Keynes. This is a wonderful collection of essays about different aspects of Keynes’s life. But he does have this love affair with Keynes and he believes that Keynes was passionately interested in India, which he actually wasn’t. He deals with Keynes’s refusal to go to India for six months on a Royal Commission, saying that it was just an excuse that he was in love and wanted to get married. He said that Keynes would never have sacrificed his love of India for a woman. But he did. So Chandavarkar is very romantic. But he deals with Keynes not just as an economist but as a philosopher and a moralist. This book shows his range of interests and his contribution to 20th-century thought. I thought this might be a good moment to say: “Read that if you want a broader view of Keynes in the 20th-century.’ In addition to my classic, of course.
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Lord Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick, and is known for his prize-winning three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes. He was made a life peer in 1991 and is a Fellow of the British Academy. He is a director of the Moscow School of Political Studies and founder and executive secretary of the UK/Russia Round Table. He is chairman of the Centre for Global Studies and a trustee of the Manhattan Institute. His account of the current economic crisis, Keynes: The Return of the Master, was published by Penguin Allen Lane on 3 September 2009.
