C. Northcote Parkinson

The youngest son of William Edward Parkinson (1871–1927), an art master at North East County School and from 1913 principal of York School of Arts and Crafts, and his wife, Rose Emily Mary Curnow (born 1877), Parkinson attended St. Peter's School, York, where in 1929 he won an exhibition to study history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson (30 July 1909 – 9 March 1993) 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 advanced the eponymous law stating that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion", an insight which led him to be regarded as an important scholar in public administration and management.

He received a BA degree in 1932.

As an undergraduate, Parkinson developed an interest in naval history, which he pursued when the Pellew family gave him access to family papers at the recently established National Maritime Museum.

The papers formed the basis of his first book, Edward Pellew, Viscount Exmouth, Admiral of the Red.

In 1934, 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.

While a graduate student in 1934, 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.

In the same year, Emmanuel College, Cambridge elected him a research fellow.

While at Cambridge, he commanded an infantry unit of the Cambridge University Officers' Training Corps.

He was promoted to captain in 1937.

He became senior history master at Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon in 1938 (and a captain in the school's OTC), then instructor at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in 1939.

In 1940, he joined the Queen's Royal Regiment as a captain and undertook a range of staff and military teaching positions in Britain.

In 1943 he married Ethelwyn Edith Graves (born 1915), a nurse tutor at Middlesex Hospital, with whom he had two children.

Demobilized as a major in 1945, he was a lecturer in history at the University of Liverpool from 1946 to 1949.

In 1950, he was appointed Raffles Professor of History at the new University of Malaya in Singapore.

A movement developed in the mid-1950s to establish two campuses, one in Kuala Lumpur and one in Singapore.

Parkinson attempted to persuade the authorities to avoid dividing the university by maintaining it in Johor Bahru to serve both Singapore and Malaya.

Parkinson divorced in 1952 and he married the writer and journalist Ann Fry (1921–1983), with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

In 1958, 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.

The 120-page book of short studies, published in the United States and then in Britain, was illustrated by Osbert Lancaster and became an instant best seller.

It explained the inevitability of bureaucratic expansion, arguing that 'work expands to fill the time available for its completion'.

Typical of his satire and cynical humour, it included a discourse on Parkinson's Law of Triviality (debates about expenses for a nuclear plant, a bicycle shed, and refreshments), a note on why driving on the left side of the road (see road transport) is natural, and suggested that the Royal Navy would eventually have more admirals than ships.

After serving as visiting professor at Harvard University in 1958, the University of Illinois and the University of California, Berkeley in 1959–60, he resigned his post in Singapore to become an independent writer.

To avoid high taxation in Britain, he moved to the Channel Islands and settled at St Martin's, Guernsey, where he purchased Les Caches Hall.

In Guernsey, he was a very active member of the community and was even committed to the feudal heritage of the island.

He even financed a historical re-enactment of the Chevauche de Saint Michel (Cavalcade) by the Court of Seigneurs and wrote a newspaper article about it.

He was official member of the Royal Court of Chief Pleas in his quality of Seigneur d'Anneville as he had acquired the manorial rights of the Fief d'Anneville.

Attendance at the Royal Court of Chief Pleas is considered very important in Guernsey, as it is the island's oldest court and its first historical self-governing body.

As a feudal member, he could therefore be the equivalent of a temporal lord in Guernsey.

As Anneville is in some ways considered the oldest fief of the island and his possessor is considered "the first in rank after the clergy", he was very interested in his fief and its historical possessions.

His efforts were unsuccessful and the two campuses were established in 1959.

The Singapore campus later became the University of Singapore.

While there, he initiated an important series of historical monographs on the history of Malaya, publishing the first in 1960.

In 1968 he 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.

His writings from this period included a series of historical novels featuring a fictional naval officer from Guernsey, Richard Delancey, during the Napoleonic era.

In the novel, Richard Delancey was Seigneur of the Fief d'Anneville, and Parkinson also loved to boast about being Seigneur of the fief d'Anneville and had even ended up transferring himself to Anneville Manor (le manoir d'Anneville), so in a way Richard Delancey seems to be a mirror image of Parkinson.

In 1969 he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland.

He chose the subject "The Status of the Engineer".

Parkinson's law, which provides insight into a primary barrier to efficient time management, states that, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".

This articulates a situation and an unexplained force that many have come to take for granted and accept.