Margaret Cole

Dame Margaret Cole

Margaret Cole in 1944-45 by Stella Bowen
Born Margaret Isabel Postgate
6 May 1893
United Kingdom
Died 7 May 1980(1980-05-07) (aged 87)
United Kingdom
Occupation Writer, politician
Alma mater Roedean School
Girton College, Cambridge
Genre Mystery, biography
Relatives John Percival Postgate (father)
Edith Allen (mother)
Raymond Postgate (brother)

Dame Margaret Isabel Cole, DBE (née Postgate; 6 May 1893 – 7 May 1980) was an English socialist politician and writer.

Life

Daughter of John Percival Postgate and Edith (née Allen) Postgate, Margaret was educated at Roedean School and Girton College, Cambridge. While at Girton, through her reading of H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and others, she came to question the Anglicanism of her upbringing and to embrace socialism after reading notable books on the subject.[1]

Upon successfully completing her course (Cambridge did not allow women to graduate formally until 1947), Margaret became a classics teacher at St. Paul's Girls' School. Her poem The Falling Leaves, a response to the First World War, and currently on the OCR English Literature syllabus at GCSE, shows the influence of Latin poetry in its use of long and short syllables to create mimetic effects.

During World War I, her brother Raymond Postgate sought exemption from military service as a socialist conscientious objector, but was denied recognition and jailed for refusing military orders. Her support for her brother led her to a belief in pacifism. During her subsequent campaign against conscription, she met G. D. H. Cole, whom she married in a registry office in August 1918.[1] The couple worked together for the Fabian Society before moving to Oxford in 1924, where they both taught and wrote. In the early 1930s, Margaret abandoned her pacifism in reaction to the suppression of socialist movements by the governments in Germany and Austria and to the events of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1941, she was co-opted to the Education Committee of the London County Council, on the nomination of Herbert Morrison, and became a champion of comprehensive education. She was an alderman on London County Council from 1952 until the Council's abolition in 1965.[2] She was a member of the Inner London Education Authority from its creation in 1965 until her retirement from public life in 1967. Harold Wilson had given her an OBE in 1965 and she became a Dame when she was awarded a DBE in 1970.[1]

She wrote several books including a biography of her husband. Margaret's brother Raymond was a labour historian, journalist and novelist. Margaret and her husband jointly authored many mystery novels.[3] Margaret and her husband created a partnership, but not a marriage. Her husband took little interest in sex and he regarded women as a distraction for men. Cole documented this comprehensively in a biography she wrote of her husband after his death.[4]

Detective stories

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 Marc Stears, ‘Cole , Dame Margaret Isabel (1893–1980)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 6 May 2017
  2. ↑ Jackson, W. Eric (1965). Achievement. A Short History of the London County Council. Longmans. p. 258.
  3. ↑ Evans, Curtis (2012). Masters of the "humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961. McFarland & Company. ISBN 9780786490899.
  4. 1 2 Curtis Evans (28 November 2016). Murder in the Closet: Essays on Queer Clues in Crime Fiction Before Stonewall. McFarland. pp. 131–. ISBN 978-0-7864-9992-2.
Party political offices
Preceded by
Harold Wilson		 Chairman of the Fabian Society
1955 – 1956 		Succeeded by
Arthur Skeffington
Preceded by
G. D. H. Cole		 President of the Fabian Society
1962 – 1980 		Succeeded by
John Parker
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