Coordinates: 52°02′10″N 0°46′12″W / 52.036°N 0.770°W / 52.036; -0.770

Milton Keynes
Clockwise from top left: Bletchley's high Street "Queensway", Christ the Cornerstone Church, the Central Milton Keynes skyline, former railway works and new housing in Wolverton and Milton Keynes Central railway station.
Milton Keynes  Milton Keynes shown within Buckinghamshire
Area	89 km2 (34 sq mi)
Population	195,687 (2008 estimate)[1]
- Density	2,199 /km2 (5,700 /sq mi)
OS grid reference	SP841386
- London	47.9 miles (77.1 km)
Unitary authority	Borough of Milton Keynes
Ceremonial county	Buckinghamshire
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	MILTON KEYNES
Postcode district	MK1–15
Dialling code	01908
Police	Thames Valley
Fire	Buckinghamshire
Ambulance	South Central
EU Parliament	South East England
UK Parliament	Milton Keynes North
	Milton Keynes South
Website	http://www.milton-keynes.gov.uk
List of places: UK • England • Buckinghamshire

Milton Keynes (ⁱ/ˌmɪltən ˈkiːnz/ mil-tən-KEENZ), sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, about 45 miles (72 km) south-east of Leicester and 49 miles (79 km) north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes. It was formally designated as a new town on 23 January 1967, with the design brief to become a 'city' in scale.

At designation, its 89 km² (34 sq mi) area incorporated the existing towns of Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford along with another fifteen villages and farmland in between. It took its name from the existing village of Milton Keynes, a few miles east of the planned centre.

At the 2001 census the population of the Milton Keynes urban area, including the adjacent Newport Pagnell, was 184,506, and that of the wider borough, which has been a unitary authority independent of Buckinghamshire County Council since 1997, was 207,063 (compared with a population of around 53,000 for the same area in 1961^[2]). The Borough’s population in 2009 is estimated to be nearly 241,000,^[3] with almost all the increase arising in the urban area.

History[link]

Birth of a "New City"[link]

In the 1960s, the UK Government decided that a further generation of new towns in the South East was needed to relieve housing congestion in London.

Population trend of Borough and Urban Area 1801–2001

Since the 1950s, overspill housing for several London boroughs^[4][5][6] had been constructed in Bletchley. Further studies^[7][8] in the 1960s identified north Buckinghamshire as a possible site for a large new town, a new city,^[9] encompassing the existing towns of Bletchley, Stony Stratford and Wolverton. The New Town (informally, "New City") was to be the biggest yet, with a target population of 250,000,^[10] in a 'designated area' of 21,850 acres (34.1 sq mi; 88.4 km²).^[11] The name "Milton Keynes" was taken from the existing village of Milton Keynes on the site.^[12]

The site was deliberately located equidistant from London, Birmingham, Leicester, Oxford and Cambridge with the intention^[13] that it would be self-sustaining and eventually become a major regional centre in its own right. Planning control was taken from elected local authorities and delegated to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC).

The Corporation's strongly modernist designs featured regularly in the magazines Architectural Design and the Architects' Journal. MKDC was determined to learn from the mistakes made in the earlier New Towns and revisit the Garden City ideals. They set in place the characteristic grid roads that run between districts, as well as the intensive planting, lakes and parkland that are so evident today. Central Milton Keynes was not intended to be a traditional town centre but a business and shopping district that supplemented the Local Centres in most of the Grid Squares.^[12] This non-hierarchical devolved city plan was a departure from the English New Towns tradition and envisaged a wide range of industry and diversity of housing styles and tenures across the city. The largest and almost the last of the British New Towns, Milton Keynes has stood the test of time far better than most, and has proved flexible and adaptable.^[14] The radical grid plan was inspired by the work of Californian urban theorist Melvin M. Webber (1921–2006), described by the founding architect of Milton Keynes, Derek Walker, as the "father of the city".^[15] Webber thought that telecommunications meant that the old idea of a city as a concentric cluster was out of date and that cities which enabled people to travel around them readily would be the thing of the future achieving "community without propinquity" for residents.^[16]

The Government wound up MKDC in 1992, 25 years after the new town was created, transferring control to the Commission for New Towns (CNT) and then finally to English Partnerships, with the planning function returning to local authority control (since 1974 and the Local Government Act 1972, the Borough of Milton Keynes). From 2004 to 2011, a Government quango, the Milton Keynes Partnership, had development control powers to accelerate the growth of Milton Keynes.

Along with many other towns and boroughs, Milton Keynes competed for formal city status in the 2000, 2002 and 2012 competitions, but was not successful. Nevertheless, the term 'city' is used by its citizens, local media and bus services to describe itself, perhaps because the term 'town' is taken to mean one of the constituent towns. Road signs refer to "Central Milton Keynes" or "Shopping" when directing traffic to the town centre.

Prior history[link]

Reproductions of the Milton Keynes Hoard (Milton Keynes Museum)

The area that was to become Milton Keynes encompassed a landscape that has a rich historic legacy. The area to be developed was largely farmland and undeveloped villages, but with evidence of permanent settlement dating back to the Bronze Age. Before construction began, every area was subject to detailed archaeological investigation: doing so has provided a unique insight into the history of a large sample of the landscape of south-central England. There is evidence of Iron Age, Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Medieval and Industrial revolution settlements. Collections [3] of oral history covering the 20th century completes a picture that is described in detail in another article.

When the boundary of Milton Keynes was defined in 1967, some 40,000 people^[17] lived in three towns and seven villages in the "designated area" of 21,863 acres (88.48 km²).

Urban design[link]

The concepts that heavily influenced the design of the town are described in detail in article urban planning – see 'cells' under Planning and aesthetics (referring to grid squares).See also article single-use zoning.

Since the radical plan form and large scale of Milton Keynes attracted international attention, early phases of the town include work by celebrated architects, including Sir Richard MacCormac, Lord Norman Foster, Henning Larsen, Ralph Erskine, John Winter, and Martin Richardson.^[18] The Corporation itself attracted talented young architects led by the young and charismatic Derek Walker. Though strongly committed to sleek "Miesian" minimalism inspired by the German/American architect Mies van der Rohe they also developed a strand of contextualism in advance of the wider adoption of commercial Post-Modernism as an architectural style in the 1980s. In the Miesian tradition were the Pineham Sewage Works, which Derek Walker regarded as his finest achievement, and the Shopping Building designed by Stuart Mosscrop and Christopher Woodward, which the Twentieth Century Society inter alia regards as the finest twentieth century retail building in Britain. The contextual tradition that ran alongside it is best exemplified by the Corporation's infill scheme at Cofferidge Close, Stony Stratford, designed by Wayland Tunley, which carefully inserts into a historic stretch of High Street a modern retail facility, offices and car park. The Development Corporation also led an ambitious Public art programme.

Grid squares[link]

Milton Keynes Development Corporation planned the major road layout according to street hierarchy principles, using a grid pattern of approximately 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) interval, rather than on the more conventional radial pattern found in older settlements. Major internal roads run between communities, rather than through them: these distributor roads are known locally as grid roads and the spaces between them – the districts – are known as grid squares.^[20] Intervals of 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) were chosen so that people would always be within walking distance of a bus stop. Consequently each grid square is a semi-autonomous community, making a unique collective of 100 clearly identifiable neighbourhoods within the overall urban environment. The grid squares have a variety of development styles, ranging from conventional urban development and industrial parks to original rural and modern urban and pseudo-rural developments. Most grid squares have Local Centres, intended as local retail hubs and most with community facilities as well. Originally intended under the Master Plan to sit alongside the Grid Roads, the Local Centres were mostly in fact built embedded in the communities and some are becoming unviable as a result of this and pressure from the new hypermarkets.^{[citation needed]}

Roads and cycleways[link]

Roundabout junctions were built at intersections because the grid roads were intended to carry large volumes of traffic: this type of junction is efficient at dealing with these volumes. The major roads are dual carriageway, the others are single carriageway. Along one side of each single-carriageway grid road there is a (grassed) reservation to permit dualling or additional transport infrastructure at a later date. The edges of each grid square are landscaped and densely planted, some additionally have berms. The purpose of the berms is to reduce traffic noise for adjacent residents, but traffic noise can be significant at many locations even some distance from the grid roads.^{[citation needed]} Traffic movements are fast, with relatively little congestion since there are alternative routes to any particular destination. The national speed limit applies on dual carriageway sections of the grid roads (70 miles per hour (113 km/h)) and most single carriageway grid roads (60 miles per hour (97 km/h)), although some single carriageway speed limits have now been reduced to 40 mph (64 km/h). Consequently the risk to unwary pedestrians and turning traffic is significant, although pedestrians rarely need to cross grid roads at grade, as underpasses exist in several places along each stretch of all of the grid roads. However, the new districts to be added by the expansion plans for Milton Keynes will depart from this model, with less separation and using 'at grade' crossings. Monitoring station data^[21] shows that pollution is lower than in other settlements of a similar size. This can be partially attributed to the large number of trees, especially as trees line grid roads in most places.

There is a separate cycleway network (the "redways") that runs through the grid-squares and sometimes runs alongside the grid-road network. This was designed to segregate slow moving cycle and pedestrian traffic from fast moving motor traffic. In practice, it is mainly used for leisure cycling rather than commuting, mainly because the cycle routes include many underpasses beneath the grid-roads and because they take meandering scenic routes rather than straight lines. Despite what appears to be a desirable facility, rates of cycle commuting in Milton Keynes are well below the national average for urban areas. The detailed article includes a critical appraisal.

Height[link]

Two of the towers of the Hub: MK development, completed in 2008. The taller building is 14 floors high.

The original design guidance declared that "no building [be] taller than the tallest tree". However, the Milton Keynes Partnership, in its expansion plans for Milton Keynes, believes that Central Milton Keynes (and elsewhere) needs "landmark buildings" and has lifted the height restriction for the area. As a result, 14-storey buildings have been built in the central business district. Some of the pedestrian underpasses have been closed in order to 'normalise' the streetscape of Central Milton Keynes and the character of the area is set to change under government pressure to increase densities of development. These changes are being opposed by pressure groups such as Urban Eden and the Milton Keynes Forum.

Recent large-scale building includes The Pinnacle MK on Midsummer Boulevard. The Pinnacle is the largest office building to be constructed in Milton Keynes in 25 years. Other developments in the pipeline include a 20-storey tower as part of the West End One development and a casino tower adjacent to the Xscape centre.^[22]

Linear parks[link]

Caldecotte Lake, Milton Keynes

The flood plains of the Great Ouse and of its tributaries (the Ouzel and some brooks) have been protected as linear parks that run right through Milton Keynes. The Grand Union Canal is another green route (and demonstrates the level geography of the area – there is just one minor lock in its entire 10-mile (16 km) route through from Fenny Stratford to the "Iron Trunk" Aqueduct over the Ouse at Wolverton. The Milton Keynes redway system of cycleways and footpaths uses these and other routes. The Park system was designed by landscape architect Peter Youngman, who also developed landscape precepts for the whole town: groups of grid squares were to be planted with different selections of trees and shrubs in order to give them distinct identities. However the landscaping of parks and of the grid roads was evolved under the leadership of Neil Higson, who from 1977 took over as Chief Landscape Architect and made the original grand but not entirely practical landscape plan more subtle.

A policy of creating "settings, strings, beads" for landscape features was introduced: 'settings' for historic villages and landscape features, 'strings' of landscape to make the linear parks hang together and 'beads' of public space where residents might linger. Higson also made the landscaping of the Grid Roads, one of the features of Milton Keynes, more subtle, with 'windows' cut into the roadside planting so that motorists travelling through had a sense of the major town they were in; early critics had said of Milton Keynes 'there is no there there', as the town could not be seen by the motorist just passing through. Now that the trees and shrubs have matured, the skill and lavish scale of the Grid Road planting makes a dramatic and welcome change from the monotony of many British towns and cities.^{[citation needed]}

"City in the forest"[link]

The original Development Corporation design concept aimed^[15] for a "forest city" and its foresters planted millions of trees from its own nursery in Newlands in the following years. As of 2006, the urban area has 20 million trees. Following the winding up of the Development Corporation the lavish landscapes of the Grid Roads and of the major parks were transferred to The Parks Trust, a charity which is independent from the municipal authority and which was intended to resist pressures to build on the parks over time. The Parks Trust is endowed with a portfolio of commercial properties, the income of which pay for the upkeep of the green spaces, a maintenance model which has attracted international attention.^[23]

Further development plans[link]

In January 2004, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced^[24] the Government's plan to double the population of Milton Keynes by 2026. He appointed English Partnerships to do so, taking planning controls away from Milton Keynes Borough Council and making EP the statutory planning authority. Their proposal for the next phase of expansion moves away from grid squares to large scale, mixed use, higher density development. The more detailed article expands on the details of their proposals. As the first stage in that plan, the Government expanded^[25] the boundaries of the designated area, adding large green-field expansion sites to the east and west that are to be developed by 2015.

In June 2004 Milton Keynes Partnership Committee (MKPC), was created by the Government and is a committee of the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), the national housing and regeneration agency for England. MKPC was created to ensure a co-ordinated approach to planning and delivery of growth and development in the ‘new city’.

The Partnership brings together Milton Keynes Council, HCA, Local Strategic Partnership representatives from the health, community and business sectors and independent representation.The role of MKPC is to co-ordinate and implement the delivery of growth and ensure that homes, infrastructure, jobs and community facilities are provided as part of a joined up approach.

The day-to-day activities of MKPC are carried out by its staff of management, professional and technical experts, known collectively as Milton Keynes Partnership (MKP).

Culture[link]

65,000 capacity by the Green Day Bullet in a Bible concert at National Bowl

The open air National Bowl is a 65,000 capacity venue for large scale events.

The 1,400 seat Milton Keynes Theatre opened in 1999. The theatre has an unusual feature: the ceiling can be lowered closing off the third tier (gallery) to create a more intimate space for smaller scale productions. There are further performance spaces in Bletchley, Wolverton, Leadenhall, Shenley Church End, Stantonbury and Walton Hall.

Milton Keynes Gallery, surface by Michael Craig-Martin

The town's public art gallery (Milton Keynes Gallery beside the main theatre) presents free exhibitions of international contemporary art.

In Wavendon, on the southeast edge of the town, The Stables provides a venue for jazz, blues, folk, rock, classical, pop and world music. It is closely associated with jazz artists Cleo Laine and John Dankworth. The venue also hosts an annual summer camp for young musicians.

Another music venue is The Pitz Club in the Woughton Centre, Leadenhall. It usually features a mixture of punk, alternative rock, and heavy metal.

There are two museums: the Bletchley Park complex, which as well as housing the museum of wartime cryptography, also hosts the National Museum of Computing including a working replica of the Colossus computer, and the Milton Keynes Museum, which includes the Stacey Hill Collection of rural life that existed before the foundation of the new town.

The town also has a literature scene, with groups like Speakeasy meeting regularly and hosting performance events, and the town's only poetry magazine, Monkey Kettle coming out twice a year. In addition, two performance poetry groups exist in the town – Poetry Kapow!, an offshoot of Monkey Kettle though now independent of the parent organisation, specialising in live, multi-discipline, interactive poetry/ art/ music events, usually featuring slams; and Tongue in Chic, a regular open mic poetry event which features headline poets such as Rachel Pantechnicon and John Hegley. Between them, the two groups supply members of Bardcore, a semi-professional group of 4–6 poets who work collaboratively on performance poetry projects.

In May 2011, the outgoing Mayor, Debbie Brock announced the appointment of Mark Niel as the first official Milton Keynes' Poet Laureate.^[26]

In July 2010, Milton Keynes' first independent Central Arts Centre was opened by Radio One DJ Jo Whiley. The centre is regenerated from the disused Central Bus Station and former Chicago Rock Cafe. It is home to the existing "Buszy" Skate Plaza, which is where the name for the regenerated venue has come from. It is managed and operated by Make a Difference a community interest company which in 2011 was awarded a "Big Society" award for their positive activities and opportunities for young people and the wider community. The Buszy is the social enterprise arm of Make a Difference. All profits raised by the cultural activity at the venue are re-invested into Make a Difference. The venue hosts independent cinema, live performance, gigs, art shows/exhibitions, dance activity, a thrift shop, office and conference facilities and the city's only social enterprise hub.

Milton Keynes also boasts several choirs – the OU Choir, the Milton Keynes Chorale, the New English Singers, the Cornerstone Choir, Quorum, and others, along with a variety of amateur drama groups, and amateur musical theatre groups.

In 1981, the main shopping area in the town centre was used as the filming location for the music video to Cliff Richard's hit Wired for Sound.[4]

Milton Keynes Forum is the registered civic society for the town.

Public sculpture[link]

Liz Leyh's iconic "Concrete Cows"

Public sculpture in Milton Keynes^[27] includes work by Philip Jackson, Nicolas Moreton, Ronald Rae and Elisabeth Frink.

Education[link]

University Centre Milton Keynes.

The Open University's headquarters are based in the Walton Hall district, though as this is a distance learning institution, the only students resident on campus are approximately 200 full-time postgraduates. Cranfield University, an all-postgraduate institution, is in nearby Cranfield, Bedfordshire. Milton Keynes College provides further education up to foundation degree level, however a Postgraduate Certificate in Education^[28] course is available; run in partnership with and accredited by Oxford Brookes University.

In the early-1990s a purpose built polytechnic was opened at Kents Hill in Milton Keynes, opposite the Open University's Walton Hall site. At around the time the existing Polytechnics converted to Universities, "MK Poly" merged with the former Leicester Polytechnic, De Montfort University and the site was rebranded the DMU MK site. However in recent years, DMU closed the MK site and the Open University has expanded to take over the buildings.

Although the town does not yet have its own conventional local university, its founders hope that the new University Centre Milton Keynes will be the seed for a future 'Milton Keynes University'. It is currently the UK's largest population centre without its own university proper.

Like many parts of the UK, the state secondary schools in Milton Keynes are Comprehensive schools, although schools in the rest of Buckinghamshire still use the Tripartite System. Results are above the national average, though below that of the rest of Buckinghamshire – but the demography of Milton Keynes is also far closer to the national average than is the latter. Access to selective schools is still possible in Milton Keynes as the grammar schools in Buckingham and Aylesbury accept some pupils from within the unitary authority area, with Buckinghamshire County Council operating bus services to ferry pupils to the schools.

The Safety Centre is a purpose-built interactive centre which provides safety education to visiting schools and youth groups via its full-size interactive demonstrations known as Hazard Alley. Another educational organisation is the Milton Keynes City Discovery Centre at Bradwell Abbey, which holds an extensive archive about Milton Keynes. MKCDC is therefore a research facility, as well as offering a broad education programme (with a focus on urban geography and local history) to schools, universities and professionals. MKCDC also holds an annual programme of events at the medieval priory site on which they are based.

Communications and media[link]

Milton Keynes has two commercial radio stations, Heart Home Counties, covering Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire and MKFM, which started in June 2011 covering Milton Keynes and the surrounding areas. BBC Three Counties Radio is the local BBC Radio station, covering Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, but has different programming from the Bow Brickhill transmitter at breakfast. CRMK Online is a voluntary station broadcasting on the Internet.

For television, the area is in the overlap between the Oxford and the Sandy transmitters and so receives BBC South and BBC East, and ITV Central and Anglia. Signal quality is weak in many areas due to distance and "terrain shadow".^[29] It was for this reason among others that Milton Keynes has one of the first Cable TV networks in the UK. However, the cable network is now ageing and in need of modernisation to cope with the imminent digital TV switchover; many residents have already opted for roof-top aerials and satellite dishes. All homes in the post-designation and/or post expansion areas of Milton Keynes are already on-net cable homes – but (as of Jan 2011) is analogue only. Virgin Media, which leases the cable network from Openreach until 2012, have yet to announce any plans for the service thereafter. The digital switchover for the Sandy transmitter took place in two phases over March/April 2011.

Milton Keynes has two free-to-residents local newspapers, the Milton Keynes Citizen, which is twice-weekly in some areas, and the MK News, a weekly.

In the early days of land-line broadband, parts of Milton Keynes were so far from the BT exchanges as to have a poor or no service.^[30] Recent work by BT to enhance its network (including FTTC and FTTP – BT Infinity) should see the issue resolved for up to 33% of customers before end of 2012^[31] – but the Eastern & Western Expansion Areas, plus rural exchanges such as Woburn Sands are in the "final third of roll-outs", meaning upgrades there won't occur until the 2017 time frame at the earliest.^[32]

A survey in spring 2011 reported that the performance of the broadband-over-3G service provided to customers in Milton Keynes was the slowest of the towns/cities surveyed.^[33]

Sport[link]

The Milton Keynes Xscape seen from across Secklow Gate View towards the North Stand as of 9 June 2009 in an England U21 international at stadium mk

Milton Keynes has professional teams in football (Milton Keynes Dons F.C.), ice hockey (Milton Keynes Lightning), and in basketball (Milton Keynes Lions), and the Formula One motor-racing team (Red Bull Racing) is based in the town. It is represented at amateur level in many sports, some at national level. For details see Sport in Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes is also home to the Xscape indoor ski slope.

Centre[link]

The Point in CMK

As a key element of the New Town vision, Milton Keynes has a purpose built centre, with a very large "covered high street" shopping centre, theatre, art gallery, two multiplex cinemas, hotels, business district, ecumenical church, Borough Council offices and central railway station.

Other amenities[link]

Part of the Blue Lagoon

• Milton Keynes has a 125-mile (200-km) network of cycleways/footpaths for pedestrians and cyclists called the Redway system, generally surfaced with red tarmac, which criss-cross most of town. The national Sustrans^[34] cycle network runs to and through the town. The Swan's Way long distance path does the same.
• Central Milton Keynes is home to the National Badminton Centre and was formerly home to the National Hockey Stadium. There is a new football stadium in the Denbigh district near Bletchley, home of Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
• Near the station, the "Planet Ice" ice rink is used for professional and amateur ice hockey plus leisure skating and amateur figure skating. See Sport in Milton Keynes Ice hockey.
• Also near the station there is a covered "urban skateboarding" arena known as the Buszy, but the wide expanses and slopes of the station plaza remain very popular among skaters.
• There is a high security prison, HMP Woodhill, on the western boundary of the town.
• Willen Lakeside Park hosts watersports, and the North Lake is a bird sanctuary.
• The Blue Lagoon Local Nature Reserve in Bletchley.
• Milton Keynes is covered by a high speed WiMax network; which allows access to the internet from anywhere with signal coverage in Milton Keynes.^[35] and the central area additionally has a free WiFi.^[36]

Original towns and villages[link]

During World War II, British, Polish and American cryptographers at Bletchley Park broke a large number of Axis codes and ciphers, including the German Enigma machine. The 1815 windmill near New Bradwell village, beside the playing fields Stony Stratford high street in festive mood The Peace Pagoda

The remainder of the designated area outside the four main towns (Bletchley, Newport Pagnell, Stony Stratford, Wolverton) was largely rural farmland but included many picturesque North Buckinghamshire villages and hamlets: Bradwell village and its Abbey, Broughton, Caldecotte, Fenny Stratford, Great Linford, Loughton, Milton Keynes Village, New Bradwell, Shenley Brook End, Shenley Church End, Simpson, Stantonbury, Tattenhoe, Tongwell, Walton, Water Eaton, Wavendon, Willen, Great and Little Woolstone, Woughton on the Green. The historical settlements have been focal points for the modern development of the new town. Every grid square has historical antecedents, if only in the field names. The more obvious ones are listed below and most have more detailed articles.

Bletchley was first recorded in the 12th century as Blechelai. Its station was a major Victorian junction (the London and North Western Railway with the Oxford-Cambridge Varsity Line), leading to the substantial urban growth in the town in that period. It expanded to absorb the villages of Water Eaton and Fenny Stratford.

Bletchley Park was home to the Government Code and Cypher School during the Second World War. The famous Enigma code was cracked here, and the building housed what was arguably the world's first programmable computer, Colossus. The house is now a museum of war memorabilia, cryptography and computing.

The Benedictine Priory of Bradwell Abbey at Bradwell was of major economic importance in this area of north Buckinghamshire before the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The routes of the medieval trackways (many of which are now Redways or bridleways) converge on the site from some distance. Nowadays there is only a small medieval chapel and a manor house occupying the site.

New Bradwell, to the north of the medieval Bradwell (Abbey) and just across the canal and the railway to the east of Wolverton, was built specifically for railway workers. It has a working windmill, although technically this lies just a few yards outside of the parish boundary. The level bed of the old Wolverton to Newport Pagnell Line ends here and has been converted to a Redway, making it a favourite route for cycling.

Great Linford appears in the Domesday Book as Linforde, and features a church dedicated to Saint Andrew, dating from 1215. Today, the outer buildings of the 17th century manor house form an Arts Centre, and Linford Manor is a prestigious recording studio.

Milton Keynes Village is the original village to which the New Town owes its name. The original village is still evident, with a pleasant thatched pub, village hall, church and traditional housing. The area around the village has reverted to its original name of Middleton, as shown on old maps of the 1700s. The oldest^[37] surviving domestic building in the area, a 14th century manor house, is here.

There has been a market in Stony Stratford since 1194 (by charter of King Richard I). The Rose and Crown Inn at Stratford is reputedly the last place the Princes in the Tower were seen alive.

The manor house of Walton village, Walton Hall, is the headquarters of the Open University and the tiny parish church (deconsecrated) is in its grounds.

The tiny Parish Church (1680) at Willen contains the only unaltered building by the architect and physicist Robert Hooke. Nearby, there is a Buddhist Temple and a Peace Pagoda. The district borders the River Ouzel: there is a large balancing lake here, to capture flash floods before they cause problems downstream on the River Great Ouse. The north basin is a wildlife sanctuary and a favourite of migrating aquatic birds. The south basin is for leisure use, favoured by wind surfers and dinghy sailors. The circuit of the lakes is a favoured "fun run".

The original Wolverton was a medieval settlement just north and west of today's town. The Ridge and Furrow pattern of agriculture can still be seen in the nearby fields and the Saxon (rebuilt in 1819) Church of the Holy Trinity still stands next to the Norman Motte and Bailey site. Modern Wolverton was a 19th century New Town built to house the workers at the Wolverton railway works (which built engines and carriages for the London and North Western Railway).

Economy, demographics, geography and politics[link]

Data on the economy, demographics and politics of Milton Keynes are collected at the Borough level and are detailed at Economy of the Borough and Demographics of the Borough. However, since the urban area is predominant in the Borough, it is reasonable to assume that, other than for agriculture, the figures are broadly the same. For the borough as a whole, the service sector (including energy and construction) is the largest, followed by manufacturing (which includes hunting and forestry).

Milton Keynes is one of the more successful (per capita) economies in the South East, with a gross value added per capita index that was 47% higher than the national average (2005 data).^[38] Service industries dominate the economy, making it susceptible to economic downturn.

The population is significantly younger than the national averages. According to 2005 estimates, the ethnic makeup of the Borough is 88.0% White, 4.7% South Asian, 3.5% Black, 2.1% Mixed Race, 1.7% Chinese or other.^[39]

Marshall valve amplifiers and some speaker cabinets are hand-built in Bletchley, Milton Keynes.

[edit] Modern parishes, community councils and districts

The Borough of Milton Keynes is fully parished. These are the parishes, community councils and the districts they contain, within Milton Keynes itself. For a list of parishes in the Borough, see Borough of Milton Keynes (Rest of the borough)

• Bletchley and Fenny Stratford: Brick fields, Central Bletchley, Denbigh North, Denbigh East, Denbigh West, Fenny Lock, Fenny Stratford, Granby, Mount Farm, Water Eaton
• Bradwell: Bradwell, Bradwell Common, Bradwell village, Heelands, Rooksley
• Bradwell Abbey: Bradwell Abbey, Kiln Farm, Stacey Bushes, Two Mile Ash, Wymbush
• Broughton and Milton Keynes (shared parish council): Atterbury, Brook Furlong, Broughton, Fox Milne, Middleton (including Milton Keynes Village), Northfield, Oakgrove, Pineham
• Campbell Park: Campbell Park, Fishermead, Newlands, Oldbrook, Springfield, Willen and Willen Lake, Winterhill, Woolstone
• Central Milton Keynes
• Great Linford: Blakelands, Bolbeck Park, Conniburrow, Downs Barn, Downhead Park, Great Linford, Giffard Park, Neath Hill, Pennyland, Tongwell, Willen Park
• Kents Hill, Monkston and Brinklow: Brinklow, Kents Hill, Kingston, Monkston
• Loughton: Loughton, Loughton Lodge, Great Holm, Knowlhill (including the Bowl)
• New Bradwell
• Shenley Brook End: Emerson Valley, Furzton, Kingsmead, Shenley Brook End, Snelshall, Tattenhoe, Tattenhoe Park, Westcroft
• Shenley Church End: Crownhill, Grange Farm, Hazeley, Medbourne, Oakhill, Oxley, Shenley Church End, Woodhill
• Simpson: Ashland, Simpson, West Ashland
• Stantonbury: Bancroft/Bancroft Park, Blue Bridge, Bradville, Linford Wood, Stantonbury, Stantonbury Fields
• Stony Stratford: Fullers Slade, Galley Hill, Stony Stratford
• Walton^[40] : Brown's Wood, Caldecotte, Old Farm Park, Tilbrook, Tower Gate, Walnut Tree, Walton, Walton Hall, Walton Park, Wavendon Gate
• West Bletchley: Far Bletchley, Old Bletchley, West Bletchley, Denbigh Hall
• Wolverton and Greenleys: Greenleys, Hodge Lea, Stonebridge, Wolverton, Old Wolverton
• Woughton: Beanhill, Bleak Hall, Coffee Hall, Eaglestone, Elfield Park, Leadenhall, Netherfield, Peartree Bridge, Redmoor, Tinkers Bridge, Woughton on the Green, Woughton Park, Woughton village.

Closest cities, towns and villages[link]

Destinations from Milton Keynes

	Deanshanger, Towcester, Daventry, Coventry Roade, Northampton	Newport Pagnell, Olney, Wellingborough	Cranfield, Bedford, Cambridge
	Buckingham, Brackley, Banbury		Woburn Sands, Ridgmont, Ampthill
		Milton Keynes    East
	Bicester, Oxford	Leighton Buzzard or Winslow, Aylesbury	Toddington, Dunstable, Luton, London

Notable people[link]

• Andrew Baggaley, English table tennis champion.^[41]
• Sam Baldock, professional footballer for West Ham United, who began his football career at MK Dons.^[42]
• Errol Barnett, an anchor and correspondent for CNN is from Milton Keynes. He lived in Crownhill and attended Holmwood First School and Two Mile Ash Middle School before moving to the U.S.^[43]
• Chris Clarke, English sprinter.^[44]
• Adam Ficek, drummer of London band Babyshambles.^[45]
• Lee Hasdell, professional Mixed martial artist and Kickboxer, and Pioneer of Mixed martial arts in the UK.^[46]
• James Hildreth, cricketer who plays for Somerset and has played for England.^[47]
• Liam Kelly, professional footballer for Kilmarnock F.C.^[48]
• Jim Marshall, founder and CEO of Marshall Amplification was living in and ran his business from Milton Keynes when he died.^[49]
• Shelly McErlaine and Karen Poole of Alisha's Attic lived in Milton Keynes, and their parents still live in Neath Hill.^{[citation needed]}
• Gordon Moakes, the bassist for the London-based rock band Bloc Party.^[50]
• Clare Nasir, the meteorologist, TV and radio personality, was born in Milton Keynes in 1970.^[51]
• Craig Pickering, English sprinter.^[52]
• Sarah Pinborough, English horror writer.^[53]
• Ian Poulter, PGA & European Tour golf professional. Member of the 2010 European Ryder Cup Team.^[54]
• Mark Randall, professional footballer for Chesterfield.^[55]
• Greg Rutherford, English long jumper.^[56]
• Jack Trevor Story, novelist, was a long-term resident of Milton Keynes.^[57]
• Sam Tomkins, Wigan Warriors and England international rugby league player, was born in Milton Keynes.^[58]
• Alan Turing, played a significant role in the creation of the modern computer. He lodged at the Crown Inn, Shenley Brook End, while working at Bletchley Park.^[59]
• Dan Wheldon, Indy car driver.^[60]
• Pete Winkelman, Chairman of Milton Keynes Dons Football Club, owner of Linford Manor recording studios, long term resident.^[61]

Bands[link]

• Capdown, the ska punk band, come from and formed in Milton Keynes in 1997.^[62]
• Fellsilent, the metal band, come from and formed in Milton Keynes in 2003.^[63]
• Tesseract, the djent band formed in Milton Keynes in 2003.

Transport[link]

the Grand Union Canal passes over Grafton Street at Bradwell via the modern Bradwell Aqueduct

The Grand Union Canal between London and Birmingham provides a major axis in the design of Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes is served by five railway stations, of which Milton Keynes Central is the one served by inter-city services. Wolverton, Milton Keynes Central and Bletchley stations are on the West Coast Main Line, whilst Fenny Stratford and Bow Brickhill are on the Marston Vale Line. Woburn Sands railway station, also on the Marston Vale line, is just outside the urban area in the small town of Woburn Sands, but is still within the Borough of Milton Keynes.

The M1 motorway runs to the east of the town, and is served by junctions 13, 14, and 15A. The A5 road runs through the west of the town. Other main roads include the A509, which links Milton Keynes with Wellingborough and Kettering, and the A421 which goes west to Buckingham and east to Bedford. Proximity to the M1 has led to a distribution center, Magna Park being established at the A421/A5130 junction.^[64]

Many long-distance coaches stop at the Milton Keynes coachway,^[65] (beside M1 Junction 14), some 3.3 miles (5.3 km) from the centre (or 4 miles (6.4 km) from Milton Keynes Central station).^[66] There is also a park and ride car park on the site. Regional coaches stop at Milton Keynes Central.

The main bus operator is MK Metro, providing a number of routes which mainly pass through or serve Central Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes is also served by Arriva (which owns MK Metro but runs Arriva-branded services from Aylesbury) and Stagecoach Group which operates routes to Oxford, Cambridge and Peterborough. See Buses in Milton Keynes for more information.

Milton Keynes is served by routes 6 and 51 on the National Cycle Network.

The nearest international airport is London Luton Airport which is accessible by route VT99 from MK Central station, this service runs with wheelchair accessible coaches. There is a direct rail connection to Birmingham International Airport. There is an aerodrome at Cranfield, 6 miles (10 km) from the centre. Although Milton Keynes is allocated an International Air Transport Association airport code of KYN,^[67] it does not actually have an airport. (There were proposals in 1971 for a third London airport at nearby Cublington.^[68] Parliament rejected the recommendation in favour of a site at Maplin Sands, Foulness).^[69]

Twin towns[link]

• Bernkastel-Kues, Germany^[70]
• Almere, Netherlands^[71]

Climate[link]

Milton Keynes experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) similar to almost all of the United Kingdom. Recorded temperature extremes range from 34.6 °C (94.3 °F)^[72] during July 2006, to as low as −20.6 °C (−5.1 °F)^[73] on 25 February 1947. More recently the temperature fell to −16.3 °C (2.7 °F)^[74] on 20 December 2010

The nearest Met Office weather station is in Woburn,^[75] located just outside the south eastern fringe of the Milton Keynes urban area.

See also[link]

• Category:Milton Keynes
• Central Milton Keynes
• Middleton (Milton Keynes Village)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Milton Keynes

• Milton Keynes at the Open Directory Project
• The Official Visitor Website for Milton Keynes
• Milton Keynes Council
• City Discovery Centre (MK urban studies centre)
• Milton Keynes Article Concept For Living Magazine, March 2008^{[dead link]}
• Urban Design magazine – "Milton Keynes at 40"
• Milton Keynes Broadband Action Group

John Maynard Keynes

Keynesian economics
John Maynard Keynes
Born	(1883-06-05)5 June 1883 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, United Kingdom
Died	21 April 1946(1946-04-21) (aged 62) Tilton, near Firle, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Field	Political economy, probability
Alma mater	King's College, Cambridge
Opposed	Marx · Hayek · Marshall · Pigou
Influences	Smith · Ricardo · Hume · Mill · Malthus · Gesell · Moore · Marshall · Wicksell · Robertson · Kalecki
Influenced	Kuznets · Samuelson · Hicks · Shackle · Vickrey · Galbraith · Minsky · Shiller · Stiglitz · Krugman
Contributions	Macroeconomics, Keynesian economics, Liquidity preference, Spending multiplier, Aggregate Demand-Aggregate Supply model

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes,^[1] CB FBA ( /ˈkeɪnz/ KAYNZ; 5 June 1883–21 April 1946) was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments. He greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and advocated the use of fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various offshoots.

In the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, overturning the older ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment, as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. Keynes instead argued that aggregate demand determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. Following the outbreak of World War II, Keynes's ideas concerning economic policy were adopted by leading Western economies. During the 1950s and 1960s, the success of Keynesian economics resulted in almost all capitalist governments adopting its policy recommendations.

Keynes's influence waned in the 1970s, partly as a result of problems that began to afflict the Anglo-American economies from the start of the decade, and partly because of critiques from Milton Friedman and other economists who were pessimistic about the ability of governments to regulate the business cycle with fiscal policy.^[2] However, the advent of the global financial crisis in 2007 caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. Keynesian economics provided the theoretical underpinning for economic policies undertaken in response to the crisis by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama of the United States, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, and other global leaders.^[3]

Keynes is widely considered to be one of the founders of modern macroeconomics, and to be the most influential economist of the 20th century.^[4][5][6][7] In 1999, Time magazine included Keynes in their list of the 100 most important and influential people of the 20th century, commenting that: "His radical idea that governments should spend money they don't have may have saved capitalism."^[8] In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a civil servant, Director of the British Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944, a director of the Bank of England, a patron of the arts and an art collector, a part of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals,^[9][10] an advisor to several charitable trusts, a writer, a philosopher, a private investor, and a farmer.

Early life and education[link]

King's College, Cambridge. Keynes's grandmother wrote to him saying that since he was born in Cambridge, people will expect him to be clever.

John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, to an upper-middle-class family. His father John Neville Keynes was an economist and a lecturer in moral sciences at the University of Cambridge and his mother Florence Ada Keynes a local social reformer. Keynes was the first born, and was followed by two more children – Margaret Neville Keynes in 1885 and Geoffrey Keynes in 1887.

According to the economist and biographer Robert Skidelsky, Keynes's parents were loving and attentive. They remained in the same house throughout their lives, where the children were always welcome to return. Keynes would receive considerable support from his father, including expert coaching to help him pass his scholarship exams and financial help both as a young man and when his assets were nearly wiped out at the onset of Great Depression in 1929. Keynes's mother made her children's interests her own, and according to Skidelsky, "because she could grow up with her children, they never outgrew home".^[11]

Keynes had his early education at home and in kindergarten. He attended The Perse School Kindergarten in 1890 before becoming a day pupil at St Faith's preparatory school in 1892.^[12] Teachers described Keynes as brilliant, but on occasion, careless and lacking in determination. His health was often poor during this period, leading to several long absences.

Keynes won a scholarship to Eton in 1897, where he displayed talent in a wide range of subjects, particularly mathematics, classics and history. At Eton, Keynes experienced the first "love of his life" (Jodessi Scholl) in Dan Macmillan, older brother of the future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.^[13] Despite his middle-class background, Keynes mixed easily with upper-class pupils. In 1902 Keynes left Eton for King's College, Cambridge after receiving a scholarship for this also to study mathematics. Alfred Marshall begged Keynes to become an economist,^[14] although Keynes's own inclinations drew him towards philosophy – especially the ethical system of G. E. Moore. Keynes was an active member of the semi-secretive Cambridge Apostles society, a debating club largely reserved for the brightest students. Like many members, Keynes retained a bond to the club after graduating and continued to attend occasional meetings throughout his life. Before leaving Cambridge, Keynes became the President of the Cambridge University Liberal Club. In May 1904 he received a first class B.A. in mathematics. Aside from a few months spent on holidays with family and friends, Keynes continued to involve himself with the university over the next two years. He took part in debates, further studied philosophy and attended economics lectures informally as a graduate student. He also studied for his 1905 Tripos and 1906 civil service exams.

The economist Harry Johnson wrote that the optimism imparted by Keynes's early life is key to understanding his later thinking.^[15] Keynes was always confident he could find a solution to whatever problem he turned his attention to, and retained a lasting faith in the ability of government officials to do good.^[16] Keynes's optimism was also cultural, in two sense – he was of the last generation raised by an empire still at the height of its power, in its own eyes and by much of the world (at least outwardly) seen as preeminent in both power and benevolence. Keynes was also of the last generation who felt entitled to govern by culture, rather than by expertise. According to Skidelsky, the sense of cultural unity current in Britain from the 19th century to the end of World War I provided a framework with which the well-educated could set various spheres of knowledge in relation to each other and to life, enabling them to confidently draw from different fields when addressing practical problems.^[11]

Career[link]

Keynes's Civil Service career began in October 1906, as a clerk in the India Office. He enjoyed his work at first, but by 1908 had become bored and resigned his position to return to Cambridge and work on probability theory, at first privately funded only by two dons at the university – his father and the economist Arthur Pigou. In 1909 Keynes published his first professional economics article in the Economics Journal, about the effect of a recent global economic downturn on India.^[17] Also in 1909, Keynes accepted a lectureship in economics funded personally by Alfred Marshall. Keynes's earnings rose further as he began to take on pupils for private tuition, and on being elected a fellow. In 1911 Keynes was made editor of The Economic Journal. By 1913 he had published his first book, Indian Currency and Finance. He was then appointed to the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance^[18] – the same topic as his book – where Keynes showed considerable talent at applying economic theory to practical problems.

World War I[link]

The British Government called on Keynes's expertise during the First World War. While he did not formally re-join the civil service in 1914, Keynes travelled to London at the government's request a few days before hostilities started. Bankers had been pushing for the suspension of specie payments – the convertibility of banknotes into gold – but with Keynes's help the Chancellor of the Exchequer (then Lloyd George) was persuaded that this would be a bad idea, as it would hurt the future reputation of the city if payments were suspended before absolutely necessary.

In January 1915 Keynes took up an official government position at the Treasury. Among his responsibilities were the design of terms of credit between Britain and its continental allies during the war, and the acquisition of scarce currencies. According to economist Robert Lekachman, Keynes's "nerve and mastery became legendary" because of his performance of these duties, as in the case where he managed to assemble – with difficulty – a small supply of Spanish pesetas. The secretary of the Treasury was delighted to hear Keynes had amassed enough to provide a temporary solution for the British Government. But Keynes did not hand the pesetas over, choosing instead to sell them all to break the market: his boldness paid off, as pesetas then became much less scarce and expensive.^[19] In the 1917 King's Birthday Honours, Keynes was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath for his wartime work,^[20] and his success led to the appointment that would have a huge effect on Keynes's life and career; Keynes was appointed financial representative for the Treasury to the 1919 Versailles peace conference. He was also appointed Officer of the Belgian Order of Leopold.^[21]

The Versailles peace conference[link]

Keynes's colleague, David Lloyd George. Keynes was initially wary of the "Welsh Wizard," preferring his rival Asquith, but was impressed with Lloyd George at Versailles; this did not prevent Keynes from painting a scathing picture of the then-Prime Minister in his Economic Consequences of the Peace.

Keynes's experience at Versailles was influential in shaping his future outlook, yet it was not a successful one for him. Keynes's main interest had been in trying to prevent Germany's compensation payments being set so high it would traumatise innocent German people, damage the nation's ability to pay and sharply limit her ability to buy exports from other countries – thus hurting not just Germany's own economy but that of the wider world. Unfortunately for Keynes, conservative powers in the coalition that emerged from the 1918 coupon election were able to ensure that both Keynes himself and the Treasury were largely excluded from formal high-level talks concerning reparations. Their place was taken by the Heavenly Twins – the judge Lord Sumner and the banker Lord Cunliffe whose nickname derived from the "astronomically" high war compensation they wanted to demand from Germany. Keynes was forced to try to exert influence mostly from behind the scenes.

The three principal players at Versailles were Britain's Lloyd George, France's Clemenceau and America's President Wilson.^[22] It was only Lloyd George to whom Keynes had much direct access; until the 1918 election he had some sympathy with Keynes's view but while campaigning had found his speeches were only well-received by the public if he promised to harshly punish Germany, and had therefore committed to extracting high payments. Lloyd George did however win some loyalty from Keynes with his actions at the Paris conference by intervening against the French to ensure the dispatch of much-needed food supplies to German civilians. Clemenceau also pushed for high reparations; generally France argued for an even more severe settlement than Britain. Wilson initially favoured relatively lenient treatment of Germany – he feared too harsh conditions could foment the rise of extremism, and wanted Germany to be left sufficient capital to pay for imports. To Keynes's dismay, Lloyd George and Clemenceau were able to pressure Wilson to agree to very high repayments being imposed. Towards the end of the conference, Keynes came up with a plan that he argued would not only help Germany and other impoverished central European powers but also be good for the world economy as a whole. It involved the writing down of war debts which would have the effect of increasing international trade all round. Lloyd George agreed it might be acceptable to the British electorate. However, America was against it; the US was then the largest creditor and by this time Wilson had started to believe in the merits of a harsh peace as a warning to future aggressors. Hence despite his best efforts, the end result of the conference was a treaty which disgusted Keynes both on moral and economic grounds, and led to his resignation from the Treasury.^[23]

In June 1919 he turned down an offer to become chairman of the British Bank of Northern Commerce, a job that promised a salary of £2000 in return for a morning per week of work.

Keynes's analysis on the predicted damaging effects of the treaty appeared in the highly influential book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, published in 1919.^[24] This work has been described as Keynes's best book, where he was able to bring all his gifts to bear – his passion as well as his skill as an economist. In addition to economic analysis, the book contained pleas to the reader's sense of compassion:

I cannot leave this subject as though its just treatment wholly depended either on our own pledges or on economic facts. The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable,--abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilised life of Europe.

Also present was striking imagery such as "...that year by year Germany must be kept impoverished and her children starved and crippled..." along with bold predictions which were later justified by events:

If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing.

Keynes's predictions of disaster were borne out when the German economy suffered the hyperinflation of 1923, and again by the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the outbreak of World War II. Only a fraction of reparations were ever paid. The Economic Consequences of the Peace gained Keynes international fame, but also caused him to be regarded as anti-establishment – it was not until after the outbreak of World War II that Keynes was offered a directorship of a major British Bank, or an acceptable offer to return to government with a formal job. However, Keynes was still able to influence government policy making through his network of contacts, his published works and by serving on government committees; this included attending high-level policy meetings as a consultant.^[23]

In the 1920s[link]

Keynes argued against a return to the gold standard after the war.

Keynes had completed his A Treatise on Probability before the war, but published it in 1921.^[23] The work was a notable contribution to the philosophical and mathematical underpinnings of probability theory, championing the important view that probabilities were no more or less than truth values intermediate between simple truth and falsity. Keynes developed the first upper-lower probabilistic interval approach to probability in chapters 15 and 17 of this book, as well as having developed the first decision weight approach with his conventional coefficient of risk and weight, c, in chapter 26. In addition to his academic work, the 1920s saw Keynes active as a journalist selling his work internationally and working in London as a financial consultant. In 1924 Keynes wrote an obituary for his former tutor Alfred Marshall which Schumpeter called "the most brilliant life of a man of science I have ever read."^[25] Marshall's widow was "entranced" by the memorial, while Lytton Strachey rated it as one of Keynes's "best works".^[23]

In 1922 Keynes continued to advocate reduction of German reparations with A Revision of the Treaty.^[23] He attacked the post World War I deflation policies with A Tract on Monetary Reform in 1923^[23] – a trenchant argument that countries should target stability of domestic prices, avoiding deflation even at the cost of allowing their currency to depreciate. Britain suffered from high unemployment through most of the 1920s, leading Keynes to recommend the depreciation of sterling to boost jobs by making British exports more affordable. From 1924 he was also advocating a fiscal response, where the government could create jobs by spending on public works.^[23] During the 1920s Keynes's pro stimulus views had only limited effect on policy makers and mainstream academic opinion – according to Hyman Minsky one reason was that at this time his theoretical justification was "muddled" .^[17] The Tract had also called for an end to the gold standard. Keynes advised it was no longer a net benefit for countries such as Britain to participate in the gold standard, as it ran counter to the need for domestic policy autonomy. It could force countries to pursue deflationary policies at exactly the time when expansionary measures were called for to address rising unemployment. The Treasury and Bank of England were still in favour of the gold standard and in 1925 they were able to convince the then Chancellor Winston Churchill to re-establish it, which had a depressing effect on British industry. Keynes responded by writing The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill and continued to argue against the gold standard until Britain finally abandoned it in 1931.^[23]

During the Great Depression[link]

Keynes had begun a theoretical work to examine the relationship between unemployment, money and prices back in the 1920s.^[26] The work, Treatise on Money, was published in 1930 in two volumes. A central idea of the work was that if the amount of money being saved exceeds the amount being invested – which can happen if interest rates are too high – then unemployment will rise. This is in part a result of people not wanting to spend too high a proportion of what employers pay out, making it difficult, in aggregate, for employers to make a profit.

Keynes was deeply critical of the British government's austerity measures during the Great Depression. He believed that budget deficits were a good thing, a product of recessions. He wrote, "For Government borrowing of one kind or another is nature's remedy, so to speak, for preventing business losses from being, in so severe a slump as to present one, so great as to bring production altogether to a standstill."^[27]

At the height of the Great Depression, in 1933, Keynes published The Means to Prosperity, which contained specific policy recommendations for tackling unemployment in a global recession, chiefly counter cyclical public spending. The Means to Prosperity contains one of the first mentions of the multiplier effect. While it was addressed chiefly to the British Government, it also contained advice for other nations affected by the global recession. A copy was sent to the newly elected President Roosevelt and other world leaders. The work was taken seriously by both the American and British governments, and according to Skidelsky, helped pave the way for the later acceptance of Keynesian ideas, though it had little immediate practical influence. In the 1933 London Economic Conference opinions remained too diverse for a unified course of action to be agreed upon.^[28]

The Great Depression with its periods of world wide economic hardship formed the backdrop against which Keynes's revolution took place. The image is Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depiction of destitute pea-pickers in California, taken in March 1936.

Keynesian-like policies were adopted by Sweden and Germany, but Sweden was seen as too small to command much attention, and Keynes was deliberately silent about the successful efforts of Germany as he was dismayed by their imperialist ambitions and their treatment of Jews.^[28] Apart from Great Britain, Keynes's attention was primarily focused on the United States. In 1931, he received considerable support for his views on counter-cyclical public spending in Chicago, then America's foremost centre for economic views alternative to the mainstream.^[17][28] However, orthodox economic opinion remained generally hostile regarding fiscal intervention to mitigate the depression, until just before the outbreak of war.^[17] In late 1933 Keynes was persuaded by Felix Frankfurter to address President Roosevelt directly, which he did by letters and face to face in 1934, after which the two men spoke highly of each other.^[28] However according to Skidelsky, the consensus is that Keynes's efforts only began to have a more than marginal influence on US economic policy after 1939.^[28]

Keynes's magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was published in 1936. It was researched and indexed by one of Keynes's favourite students, later the economist David Bensusan-Butt.^[29] The work served as a theoretical justification for the interventionist policies Keynes favoured for tackling a recession. The General Theory challenged the earlier neo-classical economic paradigm, which had held that provided it was unfettered by government interference, the market would naturally establish full employment equilibrium. In doing so Keynes was partly setting himself against his former teachers Marshall and Pigou. Keynes believed the classical theory was a "special case" that applied only to the particular conditions present in the 19th century, his own theory being the general one. Classical economists had believed in Say's law, which, simply put, states that "supply creates its own demand", and that in a free market workers would always be willing to lower their wages to a level where employers could profitably offer them jobs. An innovation from Keynes was the concept of price stickiness – the recognition that in reality workers often refuse to lower their wage demands even in cases where a classical economist might argue it is rational for them to do so. Due in part to price stickiness, it was established that the interaction of "aggregate demand" and "aggregate supply" may lead to stable unemployment equilibria – and in those cases, it is the state, and not the market, that economies must depend on for their salvation.

The General Theory argues that demand, not supply, is the key variable governing the overall level of economic activity. Aggregate demand, which equals total un-hoarded income in a society, is defined by the sum of consumption and investment. In a state of unemployment and unused production capacity, one can only enhance employment and total income by first increasing expenditures for either consumption or investment. Without government intervention to increase expenditure, an economy can remain trapped in a low employment equilibrium – the demonstration of this possibility has been described as the revolutionary formal achievement of the work.^[30] The book advocated activist economic policy by government to stimulate demand in times of high unemployment, for example by spending on public works. "Let us be up and doing, using our idle resources to increase our wealth," he wrote in 1928. "With men and plants unemployed, it is ridiculous to say that we cannot afford these new developments. It is precisely with these plants and these men that we shall afford them."^[27]

The General Theory is often viewed as the foundation of modern macroeconomics. Few senior American economists agreed with Keynes through most of the 1930s.^[31] Yet his ideas were soon to achieve widespread acceptance, with eminent American professors such as Alvin Hansen agreeing with the General Theory before the outbreak of World War II.^{[32][33] [34]}

Keynes himself had only limited participation in the theoretical debates that followed the publication of the General Theory as he suffered a heart attack in 1937, requiring him to take long periods of rest. Hyman Minsky and other post-Keynesian economists have argued that as result of this, Keynes's ideas were diluted by those keen to compromise with classical economists or to render his concepts with mathematical models like the IS/LM model (which, they argue, distort Keynes's ideas).^[17][34] Keynes began to recover in 1939, but for the rest of his life his professional energies were largely directed towards the practical side of economics – the problems of ensuring optimum allocation of resources for the War efforts, post-War negotiations with America, and the new international financial order that was presented at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

World War II[link]

Keynes (right) and Harry Dexter White at the Bretton Woods Conference

During World War II, Keynes argued in How to Pay for the War, published in 1940, that the war effort should be largely financed by higher taxation and especially by compulsory saving (essentially workers lending money to the government), rather than deficit spending, in order to avoid inflation. Compulsory saving would act to dampen domestic demand, assist in channelling additional output towards the war efforts, would be fairer than punitive taxation and would have the advantage of helping to avoid a post war slump by boosting demand once workers were allowed to withdraw their savings. In September 1941 he was proposed to fill a vacancy in the Court of Directors of the Bank of England, and subsequently carried out a full term from the following April.^[35] In June 1942, Keynes was rewarded for his service with a hereditary peerage in the King's Birthday Honours.^[36] On 7 July his title was gazetted as "BARON KEYNES, of Tilton, in the County of Sussex."^[37] and he took his seat in the House of Lords on the Liberal Party benches. – As the Allied victory began to look certain, Keynes was heavily involved, as leader of the British delegation and chairman of the World Bank commission, in the mid-1944 negotiations that established the Bretton Woods system. The Keynes-plan, concerning an international clearing-union argued for a radical system for the management of currencies. He proposed the creation of a common world unit of currency, the bancor, and new global institutions – a world central bank and the International Clearing Union. Keynes envisaged these institutions managing an international trade and payments system with strong incentives for countries to avoid substantial trade deficits or surpluses. The USA's greater negotiating strength, however, meant that the final outcomes accorded more closely to the more conservative plans of Harry Dexter White. According to US economist Brad Delong, on almost every point where he was overruled by the Americans, Keynes was later proved correct by events.^[38]

The two new institutions, later known as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), were founded as a compromise that primarily reflected the American vision. There would be no incentives for states to avoid a large trade surplus; instead, the burden for correcting a trade imbalance would continue to fall only on the deficit countries, which Keynes had argued were least able to address the problem without inflicting economic hardship on their populations. Yet, Keynes was still pleased when accepting the final agreement, saying that if the institutions stayed true to their founding principles, "the brotherhood of man will have become more than a phrase."^[39][40]

Postwar[link]

After the war, Keynes continued to represent the United Kingdom in international negotiations despite his deteriorating health. He succeeded in obtaining preferential terms from the United States for new and outstanding debts to facilitate the rebuilding of the British economy.^[41]

Just before his death in 1946, Keynes told Henry Clay, a professor of Social Economics and Advisor to the Bank of England ^[42] of his hopes that Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' can help Britain out of the economic hole it is in: "I find myself more and more relying for a solution of our problems on the invisible hand which I tried to eject from economic thinking twenty years ago." ^[43]

Legacy[link]

Prime Minister Clement Attlee with King George VI after his 1945 election victory.

The Keynesian ascendancy 1939–1979[link]

From the end of the Great Depression to the mid-1970s, Keynes provided the main inspiration for economic policy makers in Europe, America and much of the rest of the world.^[34] While economists and policy makers had become increasingly won over to Keynes's way of thinking in the mid and late 1930s, it was only after the outbreak of World War II that governments started to borrow money for spending on a scale sufficient to eliminate unemployment. According to economist John Kenneth Galbraith (then a US government official charged with controlling inflation), in the rebound of the economy from wartime spending, "one could not have had a better demonstration of the Keynesian ideas."^[44]

The Keynesian Revolution was associated with the rise of modern liberalism in the West during the post-war period.^[45] Keynesian ideas became so popular that some scholars point to Keynes as representing the ideals of modern liberalism, as Adam Smith represented the ideals of classical liberalism.^[46] After the war Winston Churchill attempted to check the rise of Keynesian policy-making in the United Kingdom, and used rhetoric critical of the mixed economy in his 1945 election campaign. Despite his popularity as a war hero Churchill suffered a landslide defeat to Clement Attlee whose government's economic policy continued to be influenced by Keynes's ideas.^[44]

Neo-Keynesian economics[link]

The IS/LM model is used to analyse the effect of demand shocks on the economy.

In the late 1930s and 1940s, economists (notably John Hicks, Franco Modigliani, and Paul Samuelson) attempted to interpret and formalise Keynes's writings in terms of formal mathematical models. In a process termed "the neoclassical synthesis", they combined Keynesian analysis with neo-classical economics to produce Neo-Keynesian economics, which came to dominate mainstream macroeconomic thought for the next 40 years.

By the 1950s, Keynesian policies were adopted by almost the entire developed world and similar measures for a mixed economy were used by many developing nations. By then, Keynes's views on the economy had become mainstream in the world's universities. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the developed and emerging free capitalist economies enjoyed exceptionally high growth and low unemployment.^{[47] [48]} Professor Gordon Fletcher has written that the 1950s and 1960s, when Keynes's influence was at its peak, appear in retrospect as a Golden Age of Capitalism.^[34]

In late 1965 Time magazine ran a cover article with the title inspired by a possibly tongue-in-cheek comment from Milton Friedman, a comment later echoed by U.S. President Richard Nixon, that "We are all Keynesians now". The article described the exceptionally favourable economic conditions then prevailing, and reported that "Washington's economic managers scaled these heights by their adherence to Keynes's central theme: the modern capitalist economy does not automatically work at top efficiency, but can be raised to that level by the intervention and influence of the government." The article also states that Keynes was one of the three most important economists who ever lived, and that his General Theory was more influential than the magna opera of other famous economists, like Smith's The Wealth of Nations.^[49]

Economics: out of favour 1979–2007[link]

Keynesian economics were officially discarded by the British Government in 1979, but forces had begun to gather against Keynes's ideas over 30 years earlier. Friedrich Hayek had formed the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, with the explicit intention of nurturing intellectual currents to one day displace Keynesianism and other similar influences. Its members included Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises along with the then young Milton Friedman. Initially the society had little impact on the wider world – Hayek was to say it was as if Keynes had been raised to sainthood after his death and that people refused to allow his work to be questioned.^[50][51] Friedman however began to emerge as a formidable critic of Keynesian economics from the mid-1950s, and especially after his 1963 publication of A Monetary History of the United States.

On the practical side of economic life, big government had appeared to be firmly entrenched in the 1950s but the balance began to shift towards private power in the 1960s. Keynes had written against the folly of allowing "decadent and selfish" speculators and financiers the kind of influence they had enjoyed after World War I. For two decades after World War II public opinion was strongly against private speculators, the disparaging label Gnomes of Zürich being typical of how they were described during this period. International speculation was severely restricted by the capital controls in place after Bretton Woods. Journalists Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson say 1968 was a pivotal year when power shifted in the favour of private agents such as currency speculators. They pick out a key 1968 event as being when America suspended the conversion of the dollar into gold except on request of foreign governments, which they identify as when the Bretton Woods system first began to break down. ^[52]

Criticisms of Keynes's ideas had begun to gain significant acceptance by the early 1970s as they were able to make a credible case that Keynesian models no longer reflected economic reality. Keynes himself had included few formulæ and no explicit mathematical models in his General Theory. For commentators such as economist Hyman Minsky, Keynes's limited use of mathematics was partly the result of his scepticism about whether phenomena as inherently uncertain as economic activity could ever be adequately captured by mathematical models. Nevertheless, many models were developed by Keynesian economists, with a famous example being the Phillips curve which predicted an inverse relationship between unemployment and inflation. It implied that unemployment could be reduced by government stimulus with a calculable cost to inflation. In 1968 Milton Friedman published a paper arguing that the fixed relationship implied by the Philips curve did not exist.^[53] Friedman suggested that sustained Keynesian policies could lead to both unemployment and inflation rising at once – a phenomenon that soon became known as stagflation. In the early 1970s stagflation appeared in both the US and Britain just as Friedman had predicted, with economic conditions deteriorating further after the 1973 oil crisis. Aided by the prestige gained from his successful forecast, Friedman led increasingly successful criticisms against the Keynesian consensus, convincing not only academics and politicians but also much of the general public with his radio and television broadcasts. The academic credibility of Keynesian economics was further undermined by additional criticism from other Monetarists trained in the Chicago school of economics, by the Lucas Critique and by criticisms from Hayek's Austrian School.^[34] So successful were these criticisms that by 1980 Robert Lucas was saying economists would often take offence if described as Keynesians.^[54] Keynesian principles fared increasingly poorly on the practical side of economics – by 1979 they had been displaced by Monetarism as the primary influence on Anglo-American economic policy.^[34] However many officials on both sides of the Atlantic retained a preference for Keynes, and in 1984 the Federal Reserve officially discarded monetarism, after which Keynesian principles made a partial comeback as an influence on policy making.^[55] Not all academics accepted the criticism against Keynes – Minsky has argued that Keynesian economics had been debased by excessive mixing with neo-classical ideas from the 1950s, and that it was unfortunate the branch of economics had even continued to be called "Keynesian".^[17] Writing in The American Prospect Robert Kuttner argued it was not so much excessive Keynesian activism that caused the economic problems of the 1970s but the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of capital controls, which allowed capital flight from regulated economies into unregulated economies in a fashion similar to Gresham's Law (where weak currencies undermine strong currencies).^[56] Historian Peter Pugh has stated a key cause of the economic problems afflicting America in the 1970s was the refusal to raise taxes to finance the Vietnam War, which was against Keynesian advice.^[57]

A more typical response was to accept some elements of the criticisms while refining Keynesian economic theories to defend them against arguments that would invalidate the whole Keynesian framework – the resulting body of work largely composing New Keynesian economics. In 1992 Alan Blinder was writing about a "Keynesian Restoration" as work based on Keynes's ideas had to some extent become fashionable once again in academia, though in the mainstream it was highly synthesised with Monetarism and other neo-classical thinking. In the world of policy making, free-market influences broadly sympathetic to Monetarism remained very strong at government level – in powerful normative institutions like the World Bank, IMF and US Treasury, and in prominent opinion-forming media such as the Financial Times and The Economist.^[58]

Economics: the Keynesian resurgence of 2008–2009[link]

Economist and current prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh spoke in favour of Keynesian fiscal stimuli at the 2008 G-20 Washington summit

The 2007–2012 global financial crisis led to public skepticism about the free market consensus even from some on the economic right. In March 2008, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, announced the death of the dream of global free-market capitalism.^[59] In the same month macroeconomist James K. Galbraith used the 25th Annual Milton Friedman Distinguished Lecture to launch a sweeping attack against the consensus for monetarist economics and argued that Keynesian economics were far more relevant for tackling the emerging crises.^[60] Economist Robert Shiller had begun advocating robust government intervention to tackle the financial crises, specifically citing Keynes.^[61][62][63] Nobel laureate Paul Krugman also actively argued the case for vigorous Keynesian intervention in the economy in his columns for the New York Times.^[64][65][66] Other prominent economic commentators arguing for Keynesian government intervention to mitigate the financial crisis include George Akerlof,^[67] Brad Delong,^[68] Robert Reich,^[69] and Joseph Stiglitz.^[70][71] Newspapers and other media have also cited work relating to Keynes by Hyman Minsky,^[17] Robert Skidelsky,^[11] Donald Markwell^[72] and Axel Leijonhufvud.^[73]

A series of major bail-outs were pursued during the financial crisis, starting on 7 September with the announcement that the U.S. government was to nationalise the two government-sponsored enterprises which oversaw most of the U.S. subprime mortgage market – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In October, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer referred to Keynes as he announced plans for substantial fiscal stimulus to head off the worst effects of recession, in accordance with Keynesian economic thought.^[74][75] Similar policies have been adopted by other governments worldwide.^[76][77] This is in stark contrast to the action permitted to Indonesia during its financial crisis of 1997, when it was forced by the IMF to close 16 banks at the same time, prompting a bank run.^[78] Much of the recent discussion reflected Keynes's advocacy of international coordination of fiscal or monetary stimulus, and of international economic institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, which many had argued should be reformed at a "new Bretton Woods" even before the crises broke out.^[79] IMF and United Nations economists advocated a coordinated international approach to fiscal stimulus.^[80] Donald Markwel argued that in the absence of such an international approach, there would be a risk of worsening international relations and possibly even world war arising from similar economic factors to those present during the depression of the 1930s.^[72]

By the end of December 2008, the Financial Times reported that "the sudden resurgence of Keynesian policy is a stunning reversal of the orthodoxy of the past several decades."^[81] In December 2008, Paul Krugman released his book, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, arguing that economic conditions similar to what existed during the earlier part of the 20th century had returned, making Keynesian policy prescriptions more relevant than ever. In February 2009 Shiller and George Akerlof published Animal Spirits, a book where they argue the current US stimulus package is too small as it does not take into account Keynes's insight on the importance of confidence and expectations in determining the future behaviour of businessmen and other economic agents.

In a March 2009 speech entitled Reform the International Monetary System, Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's Bank of China came out in favour of Keynes's idea of a centrally managed global reserve currency. Zhou argued that it was unfortunate that part of the reason for the Bretton Woods system breaking down was the failure to adopt Keynes's bancor. Zhou proposed a gradual move towards increased use of IMF special drawing rights (SDRs).^[82][83] Although Zhou's ideas have not yet been broadly accepted, leaders meeting in April at the 2009 G-20 London summit agreed to allow $250 billion of special drawing rights to be created by the IMF, to be distributed globally. Stimulus plans have been credited for contributing to a better than expected economic outlook by both the OECD^[84] and the IMF,^[85][86] in reports published in June and July 2009. Both organisations warned global leaders that recovery is likely to be slow, so counter recessionary measures ought not be rolled back too early.

While the need for stimulus measures has been broadly accepted among policy makers, there has been much debate over how to fund the spending. Some leaders and institutions such as Angela Merkel^[87] and the European Central Bank^[88] have expressed concern over the potential impact on inflation, national debt and the risk that a too large stimulus will create an unsustainable recovery.

Among professional economists the revival of Keynesian economics has been even more divisive. Although many economists, such as George Akerlof, Paul Krugman, Robert Shiller, and Joseph Stiglitz, support Keynesian stimulus, over 300 economists signed a petition stating that they do not believe higher government spending will help the United States economy recover from the late-2000s recession. Some economists, such as Robert Lucas, questioned the theoretical basis for stimulus packages.^[89] Others, like Robert Barro and Gary Becker, say that the empirical evidence for beneficial effects from Keynesian stimulus does not exist.^[90] However, there is a growing academic literature that shows that fiscal expansion helps an economy grow in the near term, and that certain types of fiscal stimulus are particularly effective.^[91][92]

Reception[link]

Praise[link]

Keynes's economic thinking only began to achieve close to universal acceptance in the last few years of his life. On a personal level, Keynes's charm was such that he was generally well received wherever he went – even those who found themselves on the wrong side of his occasionally sharp tongue rarely bore a grudge.^[93] Keynes's speech at the closing of the Bretton Woods negotiations was received with a lasting standing ovation, rare in international relations, as delegates acknowledged the scale of his achievements made despite poor health.^[16]

Hayek[link]

Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek was Keynes's most prominent contemporary critic, with sharply opposing views on the economy.^[30] Yet after Keynes's death he wrote:^[94]

He was the one really great man I ever knew, and for whom I had unbounded admiration. The world will be a very much poorer place without him.

For his part, Keynes praised Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom, writing to the Austrian economist that, "Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it."^[27]

Lionel Robbins[link]

Lionel Robbins, former head of the economics department at the London School of Economics, who had many heated debates with Keynes in the 1930s, had this to say after observing Keynes in early negotiations with the Americans while drawing up plans for Bretton Woods:^[30]

This went very well indeed. Keynes was in his most lucid and persuasive mood: and the effect was irresistible. At such moments, I often find myself thinking that Keynes must be one of the most remarkable men that have ever lived – the quick logic, the birdlike swoop of intuition, the vivid fancy, the wide vision, above all the incomparable sense of the fitness of words, all combine to make something several degrees beyond the limit of ordinary human achievement.

LePan[link]

Douglas LePan,^[30] an official from the Canadian High Commission, wrote:

I am spellbound. This is the most beautiful creature I have ever listened to. Does he belong to our species? Or is he from some other order? There is something mythic and fabulous about him. I sense in him something massive and sphinx like, and yet also a hint of wings.

Russell[link]

Bertrand Russell^[95] named Keynes one of the most intelligent people he had ever known, commenting:

Every time I argued with Keynes, I felt that I took my life in my hands and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool.

[edit] The Times

Keynes's obituary in The Times included the comment:^[32]

There is the man himself – radiant, brilliant, effervescent, gay, full of impish jokes ... He was a humane man genuinely devoted to the cause of the common good.

Critiques[link]

As a man of the centre described as undoubtedly having the greatest impact of any 20th century economist,^[26] Keynes attracted considerable criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. In the 1920s, Keynes was seen as anti-establishment and was mainly attacked from the Right. In the "red 1930s" many young economists favoured Marxist views even in Cambridge,^[17] and while Keynes was engaging principally with the Right to try to persuade them of the merits of more progressive policy, the most vociferous criticism against him came from the Left, who saw him as a supporter of capitalism. From the 1950s and onwards most of the attacks against Keynes have again been from the Right.

Hayek[link]

Friedrich Hayek, one of Keynes's most prominent critics

In 1931 Friedrich Hayek extensively critiqued Keynes's 1930 Treatise on Money^[96]. After reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, Keynes^[97] wrote to Hayek saying: "Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it" but concluded the same letter with the recommendation:

What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them. Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States.

On the pressing issue of the time, whether deficit spending could lift a country from depression, Keynes^[98] replied to Hayek's criticism in the following way:

I should... conclude rather differently. I should say that what we want is not no planning, or even less planning, indeed I should say we almost certainly want more. But the planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe enough if those carrying it out are rightly oriented in their own minds and hearts to the moral issue.

Hayek explained the letter by saying:^[99]

Because Keynes believed that he was fundamentally still a classical English liberal and wasn't quite aware of how far he had moved away from it. His basic ideas were still those of individual freedom. He did not think systematically enough to see the conflicts.

Hayek felt that application of Keynes's policies would give too much power to the state and would lead to socialism.^[100]

Friedman[link]

While Milton Friedman described The General Theory as "a great book", he argues that its implicit separation of nominal from real magnitudes is neither possible nor desirable. Macroeconomic policy, Friedman argues, can reliably influence only the nominal.^[101] He and other monetarists have consequently argued that Keynesian economics can result in stagflation, the combination of low growth and high inflation that developed economies suffered in the early 1970s. More to Friedman's taste was the Tract on Monetary Reform (1923), which he regarded as Keynes's best work because of its focus on maintaining domestic price stability.^[101]

Schumpeter[link]

Joseph Schumpeter was an economist of the same age as Keynes and one of his main rivals. He was among the first reviewers to argue that Keynes's General Theory was not a general theory, but was in fact a special case.^[102] He said the work expressed "the attitude of a decaying civilisation". After Keynes's death Schumpeter wrote a brief biographical piece called Keynes the Economist – on a personal level he was very positive about Keynes as a man ; praising his pleasant nature, courtesy and kindness. He assessed some of Keynes biographical and editorial work as among the best he'd ever seen. Yet Schumpeter remained critical about Keynes's economics, linking Keynes's childlessness to what Schumpeter saw as an essentially short term view. He considered Keynes to have a kind of unconscious patriotism that caused him to fail to understand the problems of other nations. For Schumpeter^[103] "Practical Keynesianism is a seedling which cannot be transplanted into foreign soil: it dies there and becomes poisonous as it dies."

Hazlitt[link]

Austrian School economic commentator and journalist Henry Hazlitt's The Failure of the New Economics is a paragraph-by-paragraph critique of The General Theory. In 1960 he published the book The Critics of Keynesian Economics where he gathered together the major criticisms of Keynes made up to that year.^[31]

Harry Truman[link]

President Harry Truman was skeptical of Keynesian theorizing. "Nobody can ever convince me that Government can spend a dollar that it's not got," he told Leon Keyserling, a Keynesian economist who chaired Truman's Council of Economic Advisers.^[27]

Allegations of racism[link]

Keynes was on occasion heard making statements which could be perceived as racist: for example, he would use the word "niggers" to refer to black people in casual conversations.^[104] This term was often used neutrally in British circles at that time, and was not necessarily an expression of negative feelings, as when, for example, he wrote to Duncan Grant that “the only really sympathetic and original thing in America are the niggers, who are charming”.^[105] Nonetheless fellow British observers recount being shocked by some statements he made, such as the following, apropos the Washington summer: "It's far too hot. Much too hot for white men. All right for niggers."^[104] He also wrote that there was "beastliness in the Russian nature” as well as "cruelty and stupidity”, and other comments which may be construed as anti-Russian.^[106] Some critics, such as Rothbard, have sought to infer that Keynes had sympathy with Nazism, and a number of writers have described him as anti-Semitic. Keynes's private letters express portraits and descriptions some of which can be characterised as anti-Semitic, others as pro-Semitic.^[107][108] Scholars have suggested that these reflect clichés current at the time that he accepted uncritically, rather than any racism.^[105] Keynes had many Jewish friends, including Isaiah Berlin and Piero Sraffa.^[109][110] Keynes several times used his influence to help his Jewish friends, most notably when he successfully lobbied for Ludwig Wittgenstein to be allowed residency in the United Kingdom explicitly in order to rescue him from being deported to Nazi-occupied Austria. Keynes was, furthermore, a supporter of Zionism, serving on committees supporting the cause.^[105]

Allegations that he was racist or had totalitarian beliefs have been rejected by biographers such as Robert Skidelsky.^[16] Professor Gordon Fletcher writes that "the suggestion of a link between Keynes and any support of totalitarianism cannot be sustained".^[34] Once the aggressive tendencies of the Nazis towards Jews and other minorities became apparent, Keynes made clear his loathing of Nazism. As a lifelong pacifist he had initially favoured peaceful containment, yet he began to advocate a forceful resolution while many conservatives were still arguing for appeasement. After the war started he roundly criticised the Left for losing their nerve to confront Hitler.^[30]

The intelligentsia of the Left were the loudest in demanding that the Nazi aggression should be resisted at all costs. When it comes to a showdown, scarce four weeks have passed before they remember that they are pacifists and write defeatist letters to your columns, leaving the defence of freedom and civilisation to Colonel Blimp and the Old School Tie, for whom Three Cheers.

Allegations of pro-inflationary views[link]

Keynes has been characterised as being indifferent or even positive about inflation.^[111] Keynes had indeed expressed a preference for inflation over deflation, saying that if one has to choose between the two evils it is "better to disappoint the rentier" than to inflict pain on working class families. However, Keynes was consistently adamant about the need to avoid inflation where possible.

In The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Keynes had written:

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

Keynes remained convinced of the dangers of inflation to the end of his life,^[34] during World War II he argued strongly for policies that would minimise post-war inflation.

Personal life[link]

Keynes's early romantic and sexual relationships were almost exclusively with men.^[112] At Eton and at Cambridge, Keynes had been prolific in his homosexual activity; significant among these early partners were Dilly Knox and Daniel Macmillan.^[13][113] Keynes was open about his homosexual affairs, and between 1901 to 1915, kept separate diaries in which he tabulated his many sexual encounters.^[114] Keynes's relationship and later close friendship with Macmillan was to be fortuitous; through Dan, Macmillan & Co first published his Economic Consequences of the Peace.^[115] Attitudes in the Bloomsbury Group, in which Keynes was avidly involved, were relaxed about homosexuality. Keynes, together with writer Lytton Strachey, had reshaped the Victorian attitudes of the influential Cambridge Apostles; "since [their] time, homosexual relations among the members were for a time common", wrote Bertrand Russell.^[116] One of Keynes's greatest loves was the artist Duncan Grant, whom he met in 1908. Like Grant, Keynes was also involved with Lytton Strachey,^[112] though they were for the most part love rivals, and not lovers. Keynes had won the affections of Arthur Hobhouse,^[117] as well as Grant, both times falling out with a jealous Strachey for it.^[118] Strachey had previously found himself put off by Keynes, not least because of his manner of "treat[ing] his love affairs statistically".^[119]

An early heterosexual interest of Keynes's had been Ray Costelloe, who was later to marry Oliver Strachey.^[120] Of this infatuation, Keynes had written "I seem to have fallen in love with Ray a little bit, but as she isn't male I haven't [been] able to think of any suitable steps to take."^[121] In 1921, Keynes fell "very much in love" with Lydia Lopokova, a well-known Russian ballerina, and one of the stars of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. For the first years of the courtship, Keynes maintained an affair with a younger man, Sebastian Sprott, in tandem with Lopokova, but eventually chose Lopokova exclusively, on marrying her.^[122][123] They married in 1925.^[95][112] The union was happy, with biographer Peter Clarke writing that the marriage gave Keynes "a new focus, a new emotional stability and a sheer delight of which he never wearied".^[124][125] Lydia became pregnant in 1927 but miscarried.^[125] Among Keynes's Bloomsbury friends, Lopokova was, at least initially, subjected to criticism for her manners, mode of conversation and supposedly humble social origins – the latter of the ostensible causes being particularly noted in the letters of Vanessa and Clive Bell, and Virginia Woolf.^[126][127] In her novel Mrs Dalloway (1925), Woolf bases the character of Rezia Warren Smith on Lopokova.^[128] E. M. Forster would later write in contrition: "How we all used to underestimate her".^[126]

Lydia Lopokova, Keynes's wife from 1925, whom he called "my bubbling brook of surprises".

Keynes was ultimately a successful investor, building up a private fortune. His assets were nearly wiped out following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which he failed to foresee, but he soon recouped. At Keynes's death, in 1946, his worth stood just short of £500,000 – equivalent to about £11 million ($16.5 million) in 2009. The sum had been amassed despite lavish support for various causes and his personal ethic which made him reluctant to sell on a falling market when if too many did it could deepen a slump.^[129]

Keynes built up a substantial collection of fine art, including works, not all of them minor, by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Amedeo Modigliani, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Seurat (some of which can now be seen at the Fitzwilliam Museum).^[95] He enjoyed collecting books: for example, he collected and protected many of Isaac Newton's papers. It is in part on the basis of these papers that Keynes wrote of Newton as "the last of the magicians."^[130] He was interested in literature in general and drama in particular and supported the Cambridge Arts Theatre financially, which allowed the institution, at least for a while, to become a major British stage outside of London.^[95]

46 Gordon Square in London, where Keynes lived from 1916 to 1946.

Like several other notable British authors of his time, Keynes was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Virginia Woolf's biographer tells an anecdote on how Virginia Woolf, Keynes and T. S. Eliot would discuss religion at a dinner party, in the context of their struggle against Victorian era morality.^[131] Keynes had attended church up to his teens,^[132] but by university he had become agnostic, which he remained until his death.^[133] At the end of the said dinner party, a disturbance reminded Keynes "of his theme", and he remarked that "the youth had no religion save Communism and this was worse than nothing."^[131] Marxism "was founded upon nothing better than a misunderstanding of Ricardo", and, given time, he, Keynes, "would deal thoroughly with the Marxists" and other economists to solve the economic problems their theories "threaten[ed] to cause".^[131]

In 1931 Keynes went on to write the following on Marxism:^[134]

How can I accept the Communist doctrine, which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.

Involvement with the Liberal Party[link]

Keynes was a life-long member of the Liberal party, which until the 1920s had been one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, and as late as 1916 had often been the dominant power in government. Keynes had helped campaign for the Liberals at elections from as early as 1906, yet he always refused to run for office himself, despite being asked to do so on three separate occasions in 1920. From 1926 when Lloyd George became leader of the Liberals, Keynes took a major role in defining the party's economics policy, but by then the Liberals had been displaced into third party status by the Labour party.^[11]

In 1939 Keynes had the option to enter Parliament as an independent MP with the University of Cambridge seat. A by-election for the seat was to be held due to the illness of an elderly Tory, and the master of Magdalene College had obtained agreement that none of the major parties would field a candidate if Keynes chose to stand. Keynes declined the invitation as he felt he would wield greater influence on events if he remained a free agent.^[125]

Support for the arts[link]

Keynes's personal interest in classical opera and dance led him to support the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and the Ballet Company at Sadler's Wells. During the War as a member of CEMA (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts) Keynes helped secure government funds to maintain both companies while their venues were shut. Following the War Keynes was instrumental in establishing the Arts Council of Great Britain and was the founding Chairman in 1946. Unsurprisingly from the start the two organisations that received the largest grant from the new body were the Royal Opera House and Sadler's Wells.

Support for eugenics[link]

Keynes was a proponent of eugenics. He served as Director of the British Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944. As late as 1946, shortly before his death, Keynes declared eugenics to be "the most important, significant and, I would add, genuine branch of sociology which exists."^[135]

Death[link]

Throughout his life Keynes worked energetically for the benefit both of the public and his friends – even when his health was poor he laboured to sort out the finances of his old college,^[136] and at Bretton Woods, he worked to institute an international monetary system that would be beneficial for the world economy. Keynes suffered a series of heart attacks, which ultimately proved fatal, beginning during negotiations for an Anglo-American loan in Savannah, Georgia, where he was trying to secure favourable terms for the United Kingdom from the United States, a process he described as "absolute hell."^[26][137] A few weeks after returning from the United States, Keynes died of a heart attack at Tilton, his farmhouse home near Firle, East Sussex, England, on 21 April 1946 at the age of 62.^[11][138] Both of Keynes's parents outlived him: father John Neville Keynes (1852–1949) by three years, and mother Florence Ada Keynes (1861–1958) by 12 years. Keynes's brother Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887–1982) was a distinguished surgeon, scholar and bibliophile. His nephews include Richard Keynes (1919–2010) a physiologist; and Quentin Keynes (1921–2003), an adventurer and bibliophile. His widow, Lydia Lopokova, lived on until 1981.

Publications[link]

See also[link]

Notes and citations[link]