C . Northcote Parkinson Cyril Northcote Parkinson ( 30 July 1909 – 9 March 1993 ) was a British naval historian and author of some sixty books , the most famous of which was his bestseller " Parkinson ' s Law " , which led him to be also considered as an important scholar within the field of public administration . Early life and education . 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 ) , the young Parkinson attended St . Peter ' s School , York , where in 1929 he won an Exhibition to study history at Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge . 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 enrolled as a graduate student at King ' s College London , he wrote his Ph . D . thesis on " Trade and War in the Eastern Seas , 1803 – 1810 " , which was awarded the Julian Corbett Prize in Naval History for 1935 . Academic and military career . While still a graduate student in 1934 , Parkinson was commissioned into the Territorial Army as a member of the 22nd London Regiment ( The Queen ' s ) , was promoted Lieutenant later 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 Captain in 1937 . From 1938 to 1945 , he held a succession of positions , first becoming senior history master at Blundell ' s School in Tiverton , Devon in 1938 ( and also 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 was to have two children . Demobilized as a Major in 1945 , he was appointed lecturer in history at the University of Liverpool from 1946 to 1949 . In 1950 , he was appointed Raffles Professor of History at the newly established University of Malaya in Singapore . While there , he initiated an important series of historical monographs on the history of Malaya , publishing the very first of the series in 1960 . A movement developed in the mid - 1950s to establish two campuses , one in Kuala Lumpur and one in Singapore . Parkinson actively attempted to persuade the authorities to avoid dividing the university , but to maintain it to serve both Singapore and Malaya in Johor Bahru . His efforts were unsuccessful and the two campuses were established in 1959 . The original Singapore campus , where Parkinson taught , later became the University of Singapore . Parkinson and his wife 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 , Parkinson published his most famous work " Parkinson ' s Law " , a book that expanded upon a humorous article that he had first published in the " Economist " magazine in November 1955 , satirizing government bureaucracies . The 120 - page book , first published in the United States and then in Britain , was illustrated by Osbert Lancaster and became an instant best seller . This collection of short studies 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 , the book 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 , and the University of Illinois and the University of California , Berkeley in 1959 – 60 , he resigned his post in Singapore at the University of Malaya to become an independent writer and celebrity . 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 and later restored Annesville Manor . 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 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 ' . After the death of his second wife in 1984 , he married a third time , in 1985 to Iris Hilda Waters ( d . 1994 ) and moved to the Isle of Man . After two years there , they moved to Canterbury , Kent , where Parkinson died in March 1993 , at the age of 83 . He was buried in Canterbury .