William Woodruff (12 September 1916 – 23 September 2008) was a professor of world history and author. His two autobiographical works, The Road to Nab End and its sequel Beyond Nab End, both became bestsellers in the United Kingdom. The memoirs, covering Woodruff's impoverished upbringing in an English weaving community during the Great Depression, contain significant amounts of social commentary about the conditions in which he lived. The Road to Nab End vividly describes his upbringing and his family's fight to survive the Lancashire cotton industry's initial downturn in 1920, through its decline in the 1920s, and the community's slide into the Great Depression that followed. Woodruff contributed to his family's income, initially as a newspaper delivery boy before and after school. It was at Oxford that he met his first wife Katharine, whom he married in 1940.
Academic career
In 1946 he renewed his studies in economic and world history at Oxford. In 1950 he became a Houblon-Norman research fellow supported by the Bank of England, and in 1952 he went as a Fulbright Scholar to Harvard University. He was survived by his wife Helga, their daughter and four sons, and by two sons from his first marriage.