Introduction

It is now almost thirty years since Easter Sunday in April 1946, when, while hundreds of thousands of Englishmen were enjoying their first post-war spring holiday at seaside resorts, the last of many heart attacks ended Maynard Keynes’s life. It is almost forty years since The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ap- peared in British bookshops, priced by the author at five shillings to encourage the widest possible sale, especially amongst undergraduates.1 As I write, it is fifty years since Keynes sat in a Sussex farmhouse garden composing (and sharing with his friends) The Economic Consequences of the Veace.