He was educated at
Dame Alice Owen's School in
Islington and
University College London, where he obtained a first class honours degree. He also won the Pollard and Gladstone Prizes and studied under
J. E. Neale. Hurstfield was lecturer at
University College, Southampton from 1937 until 1940. He planned to stand for Parliament but his adoption as a parliamentary candidate was prevented by the outbreak of the
Second World War. Hurstfield worked for the civil service during the war and contributed to a volume of the
official history of the war,
The Control of Raw Materials (1953). In 1946 he was appointed a lecturer at
Queen Mary University of London and held a joint seminar on Tudor history with J. E. Neale at the
Institute of Historical Research. In 1962 he succeeded M. A. Thomson as the Astor Professor of English History at
University College London, which he held until 1979. Hurstfield was also Public Orator at London University from 1967 until 1971. In 1979 he became a senior research associate at the
Huntington Library in
San Marino, California. ==Personal life==