It was the unlikeliest marriage. A Russian ballerina, brought to stardom in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes , impulsive, ardent, captivates a brilliant homosexual economist, denizen of the groves of Cambridge's academe and Bloomsbury. And, against the odds, and to the dismay of the inhabitants of Gordon Square, they marry and live happily ever after. Such is the tale of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes. And such is the story told by Judith Mackrell in The Bloomsbury Ballerina .

In 1983, a compendium of tributes to Lopokova and a subsequent publication of the early Lopokova/Keynes letters revealed something of this improbable liaison. It is to Mackrell's credit that she has uncovered much about Lopokova's life that had previously remained shadowy. The Keynes/Lopokova archive at King's College, Cambridge; information about her family in St Petersburg, where her brother Fyodor Lopukhov was a major figure in Soviet-era ballet; deductions about miscarriages when Lopokova disappeared during her early American appearances - all help elucidate her career.