John Fortescue (military Historian) - Biography

Biography

He was the son of Hugh Fortescue, 3rd Earl Fortescue and his family owned the area around Simonsbath for much of the twentieth century.

Fortescue was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was married in 1914 to Winifred Beech, of Great Bealings, Suffolk, but they did not have children.

Fortescue is best known for his monumental work on the British Army, which he wrote between 1899 and 1930. During most of this time (from 1905 to 1926) he was working as the librarian of Windsor Castle. In 1911, he was elected to deliver the Ford Lectures at Oxford University. He served as president of the Royal Historical Society from 1921 to 1925.

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