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Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a British naval historian and author of some 60 books, the most famous of which was his best-seller Parkinson's Law (1957), in which Parkinson named the satirical Law stating that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" after himself. The Law came to be taken seriously and led to his being regarded as an important scholar in public administr…
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culture · British naval historian (1909–1993) · historian · writer · novelist · opinion journalist · journalist · also C. Northcote Parkinson, Cyril Northcote Parkinson, N. Parkinson, Parkinson
Born 30 July 1909 · Died 9 March 1993 · Q352729
23 published statements · 0 followers
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Scholars trained at this University in the spirit and technique of historical research, a study divorced from all racial and religious animosities, a study concerned only with finding the truth and explaining it in a lucid and attractive literary form, should be able to make a unique contribution to the mutual understanding of East and West,
Britain spent about $500 million building a naval base there [Singapore] and the only fleet which has used it is the Japanese.
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“Scholars trained at this University in the spirit and technique of historical research, a study divorced from all racial and religious animosities, a study concerned only with finding the truth and explaining it in a lucid and attractive literary form, should be able to make a unique contribution to the mutual understanding of East and West,”
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“Britain spent about $500 million building a naval base there [Singapore] and the only fleet which has used it is the Japanese.”
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Died 1993-03-09.
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“Expansion means complexity, and complexity decay.”
“The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative. He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself.”
In 1985 Parkinson married Iris Hilda Waters (died 1994) and moved to the Isle of Man
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Was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland
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Purchased and restored Anneville Manor, the historic manor house of the Seigneurie (or fief) d'Anneville, and in 1971 he restored the Chapel of Thomas d'Anneville pertaining to the same fief
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While still in Singapore, he published his most famous work, Parkinson's Law, which expanded upon a humorous article that he had published in the Economist magazine in November 1955, satirising government bureaucracies
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The University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley in 1959–60, he resigned his post in Singapore to become an independent writer
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And he married the writer and journalist Ann Fry (1921–1983), with whom he had two sons and a daughter
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Was appointed Raffles Professor of History at the new University of Malaya in Singapore
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Was a lecturer in history at the University of Liverpool from 1946 to 1949
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Married Ethelwyn Edith Graves (born 1915), a nurse tutor at Middlesex Hospital, with whom he had two children
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Joined the Queen's Royal Regiment as a captain and undertook a range of staff and military teaching positions in Britain
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And, while it was confirmed that the Japanese had, indeed used it during the Second World War, it had been used extensively by the Royal Navy's Far East fleet, after the war
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(and a captain in the school's OTC), then instructor at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in 1939
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Parkinson was commissioned into the Territorial Army in the 22nd London Regiment (The Queen's), was promoted to lieutenant the same year, and commanded an infantry company at the jubilee of King George V in 1935
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Then a graduate student at King's College London, he wrote his PhD thesis on Trade and War in the Eastern Seas, 1803–1810, which was awarded the Julian Corbett Prize in Naval History for 1935
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Won an exhibition to study history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge
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Born 1909-07-30.
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Might be described as the moment when British Malaya was born
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And because Raffles himself was a historian
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