Plumb was born in
Leicester on 20 August 1911. He was educated at
Alderman Newton's School, Leicester, where he came under the influence of the history teacher
H.E. Howard. He was next at
University College, Leicester (BA Lond. 1933) and finally at
Christ's College, Cambridge (PhD 1936). His doctoral thesis, on the social structure of the
House of Commons at the time of
William III, was supervised by
G. M. Trevelyan, the only time that Trevelyan is believed to have taken on that role. In 1939, Plumb was elected to the Ehrman Fellowship, which was a research fellowship at
King's College, Cambridge. During the
Second World War, Plumb worked in the codebreaking department of the
Foreign Office at
Bletchley Park,
Hut 8 and
Hut 4, later Block B. He headed a section working on a German Navy hand cipher,
Reservehandverfahren. In 1946, he became a Fellow and Tutor of Christ's College and a University Lecturer in History. In 1957, he was awarded the degree of
Doctor of Letters for his work on 18th-century history, and in 1962, he was appointed Reader in Modern History at Cambridge University. He became Professor of Modern English History in the University in 1966. He served as Master of Christ's College from 1978 to 1982. He had a visiting professorship at
Columbia University in 1960. He was elected a Fellow of the
British Academy in 1968 and knighted in 1982. Plumb was the European Advisory Editor for
Horizon, and the advisory editor for history for
Penguin Books. In the 1960s he branched out as an editor, notably working on
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 with
Huw Wheldon on the BBC television series
Royal Heritage about the British
Royal family and the
Royal Collections first broadcast in 1977. An obituary in the
New York Times observed that from the 23 books that he wrote between 1950 and 1973, Plumb became wealthy enough to "indulge his taste for fine food and wine;" to build a collection of rare porcelain; to drive a Rolls-Royce; and to live in a "16th-century rectory in Suffolk, a mill in the south of France and a Manhattan
pied-à-terre in the
Carlyle Hotel." ==Influence==