Saving Cezanne : JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES Rescuing Great Art from the Chaos of War

John Maynard Keynes and the Degas Art Collection
In March 1918, with World War 1 still raging, the man who would become the twentieth century's most famous economist crossed the English Channel with a Royal Navy destroyer escort and a silver airship watching overhead. His madcap mission - to journey across the battlefields of northern France to a Paris under siege and with GBP20,000 finessed from the British Treasury, rescue some of the world's greatest art and bring it safely home to London's National Gallery for the good of the nation.
But Keynes has another, more personal reason for going. Recruited by the Government at the outbreak of hostilities, his fellow intellectuals in the pacifist Bloomsbury Group now call him 'the war-mongers accountant'. By saving objects of beauty from possible destruction, he hopes to win back the respect and love of his friends. This is the story of those few hectic, dangerous days...