Sir John Plumb, 90; Historian, Authority on 18th Century Britain

Sir John Plumb, an influential British historian and leading authority on the 18th century who was considered one of Cambridge University’s most memorable characters, has died. He was 90.

Plumb, a former master at Cambridge University’s Christ’s College, died Sunday at his longtime home in Cambridge.

As a historian, Plumb established his reputation with a two-volume biography of Sir Robert Walpole, the British prime minister who led the government from 1721 to 1742. The volumes were published in 1956 and 1960 and were among 23 books Plumb wrote between 1950 and 1973, his most prolific decades.

Among his other books are “England in the Eighteenth Century,” “The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725,” “The First Four Georges” and “Death of the Past.”

Known as an engaging and influential teacher, Plumb promoted the careers of historians Rupert Hall, John Kenyon, Norman Stone, Geoffrey Parker, David Cannadine and Simon Schama, and many others.

Among the historians who benefited from Plumb’s support and patronage at Christ’s College was Neil McKendrick.

In an obituary he wrote for the Guardian newspaper in London, McKendrick described Plumb’s “robust teaching methods, in which exaggerated praise and excoriating blame rained down seemingly at random to keep one encouraged, and yet to prevent one from becoming complacent.”

And while few people “emerged from his supervisions unscathed,” McKendrick wrote, “most admitted to being profoundly influenced.”

Indeed, although former students retain fond memories of basking in the charismatic Plumb’s company, their old teacher was not known for his tact or tolerance. As McKendrick writes, “Jack Plumb did not earn the title of being the rudest man in Cambridge without inflicting some hurtful verbal wounds.”

Plumb, with his alternately engaging and testy personality, served as the model for characters in novels by Angus Wilson, William Cooper and C.P. Snow, who referred to “the complex and contradictory nature of Jack Plumb.”

Born of modest means in Leicester, England, Plumb earned his first degree from the University of Leicester in 1933. That year, he moved to Christ’s College at Cambridge as a research student to historian G.M. Trevelyan.

During World War II, Plumb worked at Bletchley Park on the top-secret project to break the Germans’ Enigma code, then returned to Christ’s College, where he became a fellow in 1946. He was appointed professor of modern English history in 1966 and elected master of his college in 1978. He was knighted in 1982.

Plumb, who never married, was known for living life to the fullest.

Made wealthy from his writing, he was a connoisseur of food and wine, drove a Rolls-Royce and decorated his rooms at Cambridge with an impressive collection of fine silver, porcelain and paintings.

He also shared a 16th-century rectory in Suffolk, and spent time in a mill in the south of France and a pied-a-terre at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan.