Sir John Harold Plumb, FBA (20 August 1911 – 21 October 2001), known as Jack, was a British historian, known for his books on British 18th century history. He wrote over thirty books.
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Plumb was born in Leicester on 20 August 1911. He was educated at Alderman Newton's Grammar School, University College, Leicester and then Christ's College, Cambridge. His 1936 doctorate on the social structure of the House of Commons of England under William III was supervised by G. M. Trevelyan; this was the unique occasion when Trevelyan accepted a student. In 1939 he was elected to the Ehrman Fellowship, which was a research fellowship at King's College, Cambridge. During World War II he worked in a department of the Foreign Office at Bletchley Park, where he headed a section working on a German Naval hand cipher, Reservehandverfahren.
In 1946 he became a Fellow and Tutor of Christ's College and University Lecturer in History. In 1957 he was awarded a Doctor of Letters for his work on eighteenth-century history, and in 1962 he was appointed Reader in Modern History at Cambridge University. He was visiting professor at Columbia University in 1960. He was the European Advisory Editor for Horizon, and the advistory editor for history for Penguin Books. He was Master of the college from 1978 to 1982. He became Professor of Modern English History in the University in 1966. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1968 and knighted in 1982.
In the 1960s he branched out as an editor, notably of The History of Human Society series. Contributors to his books included other well known historians like Morris Bishop, Jacob Bronowski and Maria Bellonci. Later Plumb worked on a television series about the British Royal family and the royal collections (Royal Heritage BBC 1977).
He is seen as mentor to a school of historians, having in common a wish to write accessible, broad-based work for the public: a generation of scholars that includes Roy Porter, Simon Schama, Linda Colley, David Cannadine and others, who came to prominence in the 1990s. He was champion of a 'social history' in a wide sense; he backed this up with a connoisseur's knowledge of some fields of the fine arts, such as Flemish painting and porcelain. This approach rubbed off on those he influenced, while he clashed unrepentantly with other historians (notably Cambridge colleague Geoffrey Elton) with a perspective from constitutional history whose emphasis was on more traditional scholarship.
Friends from his early life, C. P. Snow and William Cooper, portrayed him in novels; he also is known to be the model for a character in an Angus Wilson short story, The Wrong Set.
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| Preceded by Lord Todd |
Master of Christ's College, Cambridge 1978 - 1982 |
Succeeded by Hans Kornberg |