This is the first full portrait of the great economist's emotional and intellectual life and his career in the arts, political affairs, letters and philosophy. Hession shows how Keynes' deviation and unorthodoxy, attributed by Hession to Keynes' androgynous character, provide the key to the originality of his breakthrough economic theory. He evokes the intellectual life of Great Britain in the late Victorian and Edwardian years in order to set Keynes in historical context. Describes Keynes' childhood and intense parental relationships and their influence on his creativity; his lifelong friendship with Lytton Strachey; and his amorous relationship with the artist Duncan Grant. Also examines his ties with the Bloomsbury group with anecdotes about the group's members, including Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and Leonard Woolf and exposes the distortion of Keynes' views by so-called neo-Keynesians. ISBN 0-02-551310-9 : $22.95.