FORTESCUE, SIR JOHN WILLIAM (1859-1933), military historian, was born in Madeira 28th December 1859, the fifth son of Hugh Fortescue, third Earl Fortescue, by his wife, Georgiana Augusta Charlotte Caroline, eldest daughter of Colonel George Lionel Dawson-Damer, third son of John Dawson-Damer, first Earl of Portarlington. He was descended from Chief Justice Sir John Fortescue [q.v.] Brought up in country surroundings at Castle Hill, near Barnstaple, he developed a great love of country life and pursuits with a countryman's eye for ground, which stood him in good stead in explaining the battlefields which he described. He was educated at Harrow under H. M. Butler, to whose love of English literature he owed much. Short sight curtailed his athletic activities, besides debarring him from a military career; he therefore entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1878, intending to read for the bar, but, finding the law uncongenial, in 1880 he became private secretary to Sir William Robinson, governor of the Windward Islands; two years in the West Indies aroused his interest in their history and connection with the army.

After completing his degree at Cambridge Fortescue spent four years in New Zealand (1886-1890) as private secretary to the governor, Sir Williaim Jervois, during which he began writing and had several articles accepted by Macmillan's Magazine. This led to his contributing a volume on Dundonald to Macmillan's 'English Men of Action' series (1896), which was preceded in 1895 by a history of his elder brother Lionel's regiment, the 17th Lancers. Messrs. Macmillan then commissioned him to write a popular one volume history of the British army. Finding it impossible to do justice to his subject in so brief a compass he obtained the publishers' assent to a more ambitious venture in four volumes. The first two (1899), which reached 1713 and 1763, were at once recognized as a really authoritative contribution to the subject, but when a third (1903) and a fourth (1906) only reached 1792 and 1802 it became evident that the work must extend far beyond the limits contemplated. Finally thirteen volumes appeared, the last (continuing to 1870) in 1930. Few historians have ventured on so large a project, still less accomplished it single handed.

A work on such a scale, copiously provided with elaborate maps, could not be remunerative and Fortescue would not have been able to complete it had not King Edward VII in 1905 appointed him librarian at Windsor Castle. This post, which he held until 1926, although it involved the rearrangement and care not only of the books but of the pictures and other collections, enabled him to carry on his history, which owed much to the encouragement of the King and his successor. As King's librarian he accompanied the King and Queen to India in 1911 for the coronation durbar, of which he wrote the official account (1912).