Misconceptions For many years, I had the mistaken belief that C. Northcote Parkinson (of Parkinson’s Law ) and Dodie Smith (who wrote I Capture the Castle , and The One Hundred and One Dalmations ) were the same person. Just in case you had the same misapprehension, they’re not. I have no idea why I believed this in the first place. It might be because Parkinson also wrote a children’s book Ponies Plot , in which ponies are anthropomorphised, as dogs are in The One Hundred and One Dalmations. The only other tenuous similarity is that both were northerners, Parkinson born in County Durham and Smith in greater Manchester. Doing some internet research to see if there were any interactions between the two which might have led to my mistake, I discovered first that no such interactions existed, and second, that famous people can have big lives outside of the subject for which they are famous. Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909-93) was a naval historian who wrote dozens of books in additi...