Worcester’s Professor of Modern History, Patricia Clavin, was a guest on this week’s In Our Time discussing John Maynard Keynes and the economics of inter-war peacemaking.

Appearing on episode 1,001 of the long-running BBC Radio 4 programme, Professor Clavin spoke about her research on the history and economy of Britain in the aftermath of World War I. She was joined by Margaret MacMillan, Oxford’s Emeritus Professor of International History, and Michael Cox, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics.

Left to right: Margaret MacMillan, Michael Cox, Melvyn Bragg and Patricia Clavin.

With presenter Melvyn Bragg, the trio unpacked the legacy of The Economic Consequences of the Peace, John Maynard Keynes’ blistering critique of the Paris Peace Conference which led to the Treaty of Versailles. Keynes believed that the economic consequences of the Allies deciding the fate of Germany and Austria-Hungary would be disastrous for all; his argument was taken up by Germany and eventually fed into British appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s. So, did Keynes merely warn of the inevitable disaster or did he somehow contribute to it?

Two of Professor Clavin’s publications were also included in the programme’s reading list:

• Patricia Clavin et al (eds.), Keynes’s Economic Consequences of the Peace after 100 Years: Polemics and Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
• Patricia Clavin, ‘Britain and the Making of Global Order after 1919: The Ben Pimlott Memorial Lecture’ (Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 31:3, 2020)

Catch up with the programme on BBC Sounds