Toper's End

Superintendent Wilson #22

by G.D.H. Cole, Margaret Cole

340 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1942

About the author

George Douglas Howard Cole was an English political theorist, economist, writer and historian. As a libertarian socialist he was a long-time member of the Fabian Society and an advocate for the cooperative movement. He and his wife Margaret Cole (1893-1980) together wrote many popular detective stories, featuring the investigators Superintendent Wilson, Everard Blatchington and Dr Tancred.

Cole was educated at St Paul's School and Balliol College, Oxford.

As a conscientious objector during World War One, Cole's involvement in the campaign against conscription introduced him to a co-worker, Margaret Postgate, whom he married in 1918. The couple both worked for the Fabian Society for the next six years before moving to Oxford, where Cole started writing for the Manchester Guardian. During these years, he also authored several economic and historical works including biographies of William Cobbett and Robert Owen. In 1925, he became reader in economics at University College, Oxford. In 1944, Cole became the first Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. He was succeeded in the chair by Isaiah Berlin in 1957.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Percy Sambourne is a rich man, an accomplished chemist, a crank economist, and kind-hearted enough to fill his house with refugees from beleaguered Europe. Of course, the refugees squabble, the servants complain, and life in Excalibur House is dirty and unpleasant, but Sambourne is in his private lab most of the time, so he doesn't care. The addition of one more refugee and Sambourne's obnoxious sister and her two children add to the craziness, until Sambourne is found poisoned and there's a death. The "Cast of characters" page got a workout until I determined who was who, but this peak at wartime England was absorbing.