John Ehrman

John Patrick William Ehrman FBA (17 March 1920 – 15 June 2011) was a British historian, most notable for his three-volume biography of William Pitt the Younger. He wrote two volumes of the official British History of the Second World War; "Grand Strategy" Volumes V & VI (as Sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge). He also wrote A Half-Century of Controversy The Alger Hiss Case which has been published on the CIA's website.

Boyd Hilton has claimed that "Pitt dominated the politics of his time and John Ehrman's three-volumes...dominate the historiography. It is hardly a biography, and indeed it is not clear that Pitt had an inner life to biographize, but it is a consummate account of the political ‘life and times’. The author's determination to deal with every episode in detail sometimes blurs the perspective, but readers can be assured that each topic has been thoroughly researched and that Ehrman's analysis is invariably judicious".

Ehrman married a daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake.

Works

• The Navy in the War of William III, 1689–1697 (Cambridge University Press, 1953).
• Ehrman, John (1956). Grand Strategy Volume V: August 1942 – September 1943. History of the Second World War: United Kingdom Military Series. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office. OCLC 217257928.
• Ehrman, John (1956). Grand Strategy Volume VI: October 1944 – August 1945. History of the Second World War: United Kingdom Military Series. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
• Cabinet Government and War, 1890–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 1958).
• The British Government and Commercial Negotiations with Europe 1783–1793 (Cambridge University Press, 1962).
• The Younger Pitt
  • The Years of Acclaim (Constable, 1969).
  • The Reluctant Transition (Constable, 1983).
  • The Consuming Struggle (Constable, 1996).

External links

• Obituary of John Ehrman, The Daily Telegraph, 17 June, 2011