ABSTRACT
One of the most striking features of Britain’s history has been the continuity of her ideas and institutions. Political, economic, and social change has usually been slow and gradual, and even world wars seem more often to have accelerated existing trends than to have brought about fundamental changes of mood or direction. This makes it peculiarly difficult to decide where to begin an account of the post-1945 expansion of the role of the economist in government. One obvious starting point is the publication of J.M. (later Lord) Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which is generally acknowledged to be the most important book written by an economist in this century. But there is an obvious danger of exaggerating the influence of any single individual thinker on the subsequent course of events, more especially as there is still vigorous and seemingly endless controversy about the precise antecedents, character, and significance of the General Theory, the relationships between Keynes’ own ideas and those of his disciples the Keynesians, and the validity and influence of Keynesian economics.1
