E. J. Barnes

1926. Maynard Keynes has long been a thorn in the side of the British Establishment. Rejected for his radical ideas, he has made an unlikely marriage to a Russian ballerina.

While Maynard frets about the ever-growing dole queues and plans his route to power by way of the magnetic Lloyd George, Lydia is tormented by the thought of her family in Leningrad. Exiled by the Russian Revolution, she has found fame and fortune as a dancer. Yet however demanding the role of stage celebrity, it is less challenging than that of the supposedly respectable and fortunate Mrs Keynes.

Then comes the Wall Street Crash, followed by a depression the likes of which the world has never seen. In the turmoil of the 1930s, the intellectual Maynard finds that answers must be sought in the most unlikely places.

When the brilliant Maynard Keynes walks out on the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he seems destined to obscurity. But in the crisis-ridden 1920s, he soon finds himself back on the public stage. A man of fierce intelligence but hidden susceptibilities, he is not afraid to speak the truth or hold the powerful to account, in a world on the brink of collapse.

Ballerina Lydia Lopokova has fled the Russian Revolution and is now seeking her own personal salvation. The last thing she expects is to join her fate to that of a Bohemian economist.

Set in a world where personal and political certainties are crumbling, and where the very future of capitalism is in question, this is a novel about money and power, as well as an unusual love story.

Book 1 in the Mr Keynes series.