The Art Of Keynes

It's March 1918. Sticking out from a hedge in rural Sussex is a brown-paper package containing a painting of 6 apples, C退zanne's famous 'Pommes'.

It's been left there by the economist John Maynard Keynes, who's been dropped at the end of the lane leading to his friends, the artists Clive and Vanessa Bell's home, and can only manage to carry his suitcases.

Writer and broadcaster Nicholas Wapshott tells the extraordinary and largely unknown story of how Keynes persuaded the British government to take paintings in lieu of France's war debt.

So as shells rained down on Paris, Keynes was buying priceless works by Manet, Delacroix, Degas, Gaugin and many more which now hang in the National Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The National Gallery didn't rate C退zanne so Keynes kept 'Pommes' for himself and later hung it over his bed.

Featuring: Nicholas Penny, Director of the National Gallery, Stephen Keynes (the economist's great nephew) and Keynes expert Victoria Chick.

Producer: Trevor Dann

A Trevor Dann production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in May 2014.

Nicholas Wapshott on how the economist used government money to buy paintings in WWI.