John Maynard Keynes: Bisexuality, ballerinas and brilliance at economics too

THRILLING as it is for old lefties to find their hero, the economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), making headlines again as Alistair Darling vows to spend his way out of the recession – a key Keynes interventionist approach – many of us are scrabbling to sound knowledgeable about the moustachioed old fox. He's right back in fashion now, so here's our ten-point bluffer's guide to the great economist

1 HE WAS BISEXUAL

Yes, yes, he was one of the fathers of modern theoretical macroeconomics, but it cannot be overlooked that Keynes's sex life was pretty wild. His early romantic relationships were almost all with men – his diary lists 50 gay affairs between the ages of 18 and 33, ranging from Bloomsbury Set painter Duncan Grant and writer Lytton Strachey to a boy who operated the lift in a London Tube station. But then he amazed all his friends by falling in love with a 38-year-old Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopokova, right, and marrying her in 1925. It was, it seems, a genuine love match. Robert Skidelsky, Keynes's biographer, says: "Sexual relations certainly developed, and by 1924 Lydia was appreciative of Maynard's 'subtle' sexual technique."

2 HIS APPEAL EXTENDS TO POP MUSIC

In 1987 he was immortalised in the Deacon Blue song, Dignity, whose lyric includes the lines: "I'm telling this story/in a faraway scene/sipping down raki/and reading Maynard Keynes."

3 KEYNES IS PRONOUNCED "CAINS"

It's one of those tongue-twisters that can easily catch out the unwary prole, but you need to get the pronunciation right unless you want to make yourself sound like a duffer.