New play explores John Maynard Keynes's double life as economist and art collector

A new play is exploring the life of John Maynard Keynes, the economist whose ideas governments have repeatedly turned to in times of crisis, according to the Guardian.

The production focuses on Keynes as a member of the art-loving Bloomsbury Group, and revisits his long-running battle of ideas with his free-market rival, Friedrich Hayek, a rivalry that has shaped economic debate for a century.

The Guardian's account recalls an episode from the spring of 1918, when Keynes, then a Treasury official, travelled by train across northern France towards an auction, even as the sound of advancing German guns could be heard along the way.

Keynes was not travelling on war business but to attend the sale of works from the studio of the painter Edgar Degas, who had died the previous year. He returned to London with impressionist works for the National Gallery, having persuaded the chancellor of the exchequer to approve spending £20,000 at the auction.

The episode is presented as emblematic of Keynes's dual identity, a central figure in British economic policy who also moved in the artistic and cultural circles of the Bloomsbury Group.