The correspondence between Keynes and Kingsley Martin covers the last twenty-three years of Keynes's life. It began when Martin had been an unsuccessful candidate for an external Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, with an early version of what became The Triumph of Lord Palmerston: A Study of Public Opinion in England before the Crimean War (London, 1924).

To Kingsley Martin, 10 April 1923

Dear Martin,

I do not know if anyone has written to you about your dissertation for the King's Fellowship. But I should like you to know that it was the subject of a great many very favourable comments from quarters whose approbation would, I think, have given you much pleasure. You were, in fact, a very serious candidate for election, and many of us were extremely sorry that it did not in the end prove possible to get you elected.

Personally, I thought your dissertation quite remarkably good, interesting and learned and subtle, and in every way excellent. It was a very promising piece of work, as I think everyone who expressed an opinion of it was quite agreed.

I do not know whether you will have heard that Hubert Henderson is to be the new Editor of The Nation and that I shall be closely connected with its management. Possibly you might like to do some reviewing, etc. for us from time to time. If so, we should be very glad that you should do so.