Radio Times: Review by:; David Butcher

Stephanie Flanders goes the extra Reithian mile to cast light through the fog of economics. Given that most of us have a feebler grasp on the subject than (a) we pretend and (b) politicians and the media assume, this can only be a good thing. She starts with a man whose name was once mud, but who now bestrides the post-financial-crisis debate: John Maynard Keynes.

As Alistair Darling points out, Keynes was the prophet of interdependence. “If you visit upon countries things they can never deliver, it will end in tears,” says Darling of the Eurozone, though it also applied to Germany after the First World War. It’s a fascinating history lesson.

About this programme

1/3. Stephanie Flanders explores the ideas of three influential thinkers who transformed international economics, and examines how their influence has shaped the 20th and 21st centuries. She begins by profiling John Maynard Keynes, the Cambridge-born economist whose ideas revolutionised the approach of Western governments to financial crises during the Great Depression and the Second World War, and explains why the world's leaders drew on his teachings as the global meltdown took hold in 2008.