Librarian note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name The son of a businessman, John Patrick William Ehrman was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1947. Though a specialist in British history in the late-17th and 18th centuries, he was seconded to the Cabinet Office and wrote two of the volumes of the official history of Britain in the Second World War. After publishing a volume on the Royal Navy in the war of William III, he turned his attention to writing a multi-volume biography of William Pitt the Younger, a project that would occupy the next four decades of his life. Ehrman was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1970 and served as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1971 until 1985 and as a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts from 1976 until 1994. He was the head of the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust from 1989 until 1994, and he served twice as vice-president of the Navy Records Society.