Cole, G(eorge) D(ouglas) H(oward) (1889-1959)

English economist, historian, and detective-story writer. Chair of the Fabian Society 1939-46 and 1948-50 and its president from 1952, he wrote numerous books on socialism, including biographies of William Cobbett (1925) and Robert Owen (1925) and a history of the British working-class movements (1948), often in collaboration with his wife, Margaret Isabel Cole (1893-1980), and her brother, Raymond Postgate. The Coles also collaborated in writing detective fiction.

Born in London, Cole was educated at St Paul's School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he became a reader in economics in 1925 and Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory in 1944.