Bryan Gould

Gould was born in Hāwera, New Zealand, on 11 February 1939, the son of Charles Terence Gould and Elsie Gladys May Gould (née Driller).^[2] He was educated at Tauranga College from 1951 to 1953, and then Dannevirke High School between 1954 and 1955.^[2] He went on to study at Victoria University College from 1956 to 1958, and Auckland University College from 1959 to 1962, graduating BA LLB in 1961, and LLM with first-class honours two years later.^[2][3] He was a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar to Balliol College, Oxford, from 1962. After completing a degree in Law with first-class honours, he joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1964. He then returned to Oxford as a tutorial Fellow in Law at Worcester College alongside Francis Reynolds.

Gould's brother is Wayne Gould, best known for popularising Sudoku. They are descendants of George Gould, a former chairman of the New Zealand Shipping Company.^[4] In 1967, Bryan Gould married Gillian Anne Harrigan, and the couple went on to have two children.^[2]

Having fought the UK seat Southampton Test unsuccessfully in February 1974, Gould was elected Labour MP in October 1974 and held it until 1979. He worked as a television journalist from 1979 to 1983, and was then elected as MP for Dagenham from 1983, holding the seat until he resigned on 17 May 1994.

Gould was a member of Neil Kinnock's shadow cabinet, serving first as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, then as spokesman on Trade and Industry, the Environment,^[5] and later on Heritage. In 1992 he founded the Full Employment Forum. Later that year he was defeated in the leadership election to succeed Kinnock following the general election, which Labour had lost to the Conservative Party for the fourth election in succession. John Smith won the leadership contest,^[6] but Gould resigned from Smith's shadow cabinet on 27 September 1992 when the shadow cabinet rejected a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty and in protest against Labour's support for the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.^[7] He resigned his parliamentary seat in May 1994 when he was about to return to New Zealand.

In July 1994, Gould returned to New Zealand and became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waikato, serving until his retirement in 2004. In this position, Gould was instrumental in initiating The Great Race, a rowing race for Waikato University against international universities on the Waikato River. The Bryan Gould Cup for the women's eights race is named after him.^[8]

In August 1995, Gould was commissioned by the London Evening Standard to write an article on Tony Blair's leadership, in which he accused Blair of having "given up" his socialist ideals and being "solely interested in power", which would lead to "massive problems in office".^[9] However, the newspaper initially mistakenly published another article under Gould's name, received by fax at the same time, submitted anonymously by Nick Howard, the 19-year-old son of the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard.^[10] This led to an apology from the newspaper's editor, Stewart Steven.^[11]

In the 2005 Queen's Birthday Honours, Gould was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to tertiary education.^[12] In October 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Waikato.^[13] He served as a board member of TVNZ between 2004 and 2007.^[14]