George Bernard Shaw said that “Lack of money is the root of all evil”, whilst the Bible says “For the love of money is the root of all evil…” Do money lenders defeat Shaw’s evil, or do they feed the Bible’s evil?

In his varied and extensive career in the money lending industry, George Watson has seen money lending in all its manifestations and became fascinated by its history and by its various effects on people and societies. Money lending has become an all-embracing all consuming monolith which either serves societies or devours them depending on your view.

Living life as both lender and borrower, encountering people from every part of the economic and social spectrum, there grew a deep understanding of the extent to which money lending in all its forms affects and implicates everyone, whilst simultaneously, society candy coats the activity and avoids the moral choice, should we love them or loathe them?.

This book examines how life connects us all to the money lenders, how it started, how it evolved and where it is now. It examines the humour, the pathos, the successes and failures of an activity that has affected us or infected us since the dawn of history.

Is it good or evil? You make up your mind. You are part of it.

George Watson was born in Malawi in Central Africa and educated in the UK. He read law and was called to the Bar in 1971. Being of an entrepreneurial and libertarian nature, he went into business on his own account, providing finance to small owner-managed start-up and early stage businesses in London. In 1998 he moved to Cape Town in South Africa to establish the same business in the new post apartheid South Africa. The business was sold to a government agency and now he divides his time between London and Cape Town, consulting, travelling widely and writing.