author
Margaret Cole
1893–1980
A pioneering socialist writer, poet, and public servant, she combined political conviction with a talent for mystery fiction and biography. Her best-known poem, “The Falling Leaves,” remains a poignant reflection on the losses of war.
2 Audiobooks
The man from the river : A Wilson Story
by G. D. H. (George Douglas Howard) Cole, Margaret Cole
The death of a millionaire
by G. D. H. (George Douglas Howard) Cole, Margaret Cole
About the author
Born Margaret Isabel Postgate in 1893, she studied classics at Girton College, Cambridge, graduating in 1914, and later taught at St Paul’s Girls’ School in London. Her political outlook was shaped by her family’s liberal traditions and her brother’s imprisonment as a conscientious objector during the First World War.
She married socialist scholar G. D. H. Cole in 1918 and sometimes collaborated with him on detective stories. Alongside her writing, she became an influential Labour and Fabian figure, serving in important London government roles after the Second World War. Her books included Beatrice Webb, The Story of Fabian Socialism, and The Life of G. D. H. Cole. She was appointed OBE in 1965 and DBE in 1970.