Gould was a modest man who did not take himself or his work too seriously. His advice to emerging writers was to 'write about men and things you have met and seen; take your characters from the busy world, and your scenes from Nature'. But within its limits his work was very good. He told a simple story exceedingly well in an unaffected way. Many of his books were concerned with horse racing, and no great originality of plot was to be expected, but they were written with such flair and genuine interest that their countless readers took up each book as it was published, confident in their belief that here was another rattling good story.