J. H. Plumb

J. H. Plumb was born in 1911 in Leicester. He was educated at University College, Leicester, and Christ's College, Cambridge. He studied for his Ph.D. under G. M. Trevelyan, which he completed in 1936. Three years later he was elected to the Ehrman Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge. Returning to Cambridge after working in the Foreign Office during the Second World War, he became a Fellow and Tutor of Christ's College and was Master of the College between 1978 and 1982. He was Professor of Modern English History at Cambridge between 1966 and 1974, and is now Emeritus Professor. He has been a visiting lecturer at a number of universities in England and the US. He is an Honorable Member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. He was knighted in 1982.

His books include England in the Eighteenth Century (1950); Chatham (1953); The First Four Georges (1956); The Renaissance (1961); The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725 (1967); Royal Heritage (1977) and two volumes of collected essays: The Making of a Historian (1988) and The American Experience (1989).