Godley

A comprehensive biography of General Sir Alexander Godley, presenting for the first time a fair and balanced look at his time as commander of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) and II ANZAC Corps during World War I. While Godley is generally remembered as being a poor field commander, Terry Kinloch argues that he was in fact a capable one who had little or no ability to influence the failed battles at Gallipoli and Passchendaele that he is often seen as responsible for. Kinloch also presents, for the first time, a detailed account of Godley’s long pre- and post-World War I career in the British Army. After the war Godley returned to the British Army, eventually reaching the rank of general before retiring in 1933. During his 48-year military career, he also served on operations in Rhodesia and South Africa, as a mounted infantry instructor, in the post-war British occupation force in Germany, and as the Governor of Gibraltar.

This timely biography of the economist Wynne Godley (1926-2010) charts his long and often crisis-blown route to a new way of understanding whole economies. It shows how early frustrations as a policy-maker enabled him to glimpse the cliff-edges other macro-modellers missed, and re-arm ‘Keynesian’ theory against the orthodoxy that had tried to absorb it. Godley gained notoriety for his economic commentaries - foreseeing the malaise of the 1970s, the Reagan-Thatcher slump, the unsustainable 1980s and 1990s booms, and the crises in the Eurozone and world economies after 2008. This foresight arose from a series of advances in his understanding of national accounting, price-setting, the role of modern finance, and the use of economic data, especially to grasp the interlinkage of stocks and flows. This biography also gives due attention to Godley's life outside academic economics – including his chaotic childhood, truncated career as a professional oboist, equally brief stints as a sculptor’s model and economist in industry, and a longer spell as as a Treasury adviser with a mystery gift for forecasting. This first full-length biography traces Wynne Godley’s long career from professional musician to public servant, policymaker, tormentor of conventional macroeconomics and creator of a workable alternative – all after escaping a childhood of decaying mansions and draconian schools, and rescuing his private world from the legacy of two Freuds. Drawing on Godley’s published and unpublished work and extensive interviews with those who knew him, the author explores Godley's improbable life and explains the lasting significance of his work.

It's 1945 and Martin Heath, like many men at that time, is struggling to settle, to find his place again after the horrors of war. Then an old comrade sends him a letter and tells him of a position that's just come up in the remote wilds of Dartmoor - working for an elderly fellow called Mr Godley. "Are you a good driver, Mr Heath?" It's a simple question and a simple task and the doorway to a dark mystery that may just turn out to be the escape he was hoping for - but at what cost?

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Brought up amid near-Dickensian squalour in the tough East End of Glasgow and sexually abused by her uncle, Janey married into a Glasgow criminal family as a teenager, then found herself having to cope with the murder of her mother, violence, religious sectarianism, abject poverty and a frightening family of in-laws. First-hand, Janey saw the gangland violence and met extraordinary characters within an enclosed and seldom-revealed Glasgow underworld - from the grim and far-from-Swinging 60s, to the discos of the 70s, to the tidal wave of heroin addiction which swept through and engulfed Glasgow's East End during the 1980s. This evocative, intimate and moving portrayal of a woman forced to fight every day for her family's future will strike a chord with anyone who has ever struggled against adversity.