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.