foreign holidays in Provence, the Algarve and the Caribbean for himself and his friends.
These were the prosperous years when he also bought in profusion: eighteenth-century English silver; seventeenth-century Dutch paintings; and in particular fine wine, which led him to amass the finest private cellar in Cambridge; and, perhaps most notably of all, fine porcelain, which became a finer collection of Vincennes and Sèvres than that in the Fitzwilliam museum.
These were the heady years when he aspired to become Regius Professor of History in Cambridge, President of the British Academy, and ultimately a peer of the realm.
These were the upbeat years when Sir David Cannadine has described him as being “at his Balzacian best” when “he radiated warmth, buoyancy, optimism and hope”.
These were the years when he was at his exuberant and inspiring best, attracting and helping to promote his remarkable and unparalleled phalanx of brilliant pupils.
From these dizzying peaks of achievement and acclaim, and even more dizzying peaks of aspiration, there were to follow the years of disappointment and decline and ambitions not achieved. These were the darker years of rage, resentment and recrimination, which saw him in what Cannadine has described as “his more Dostoyevskian mode” when “he was consumed by doubt, loneliness and disappointment”.
In old age his private life seemed to offer few compensations. He had always claimed that he had based his life on serial friendships with both sexes. He had always derided marriage. He claimed to have had a daughter but he never recognized her. Without children or grandchildren or a permanent partner to comfort him in his later decades, he began to think that he might have made the wrong choices in his personal life.
The end was the darkest episode of all – a lonely and embittered old age, when, echoing the closing words of his great work on Walpole, “the future would bring the death of friends, the decline of powers, age, sickness and defeat”.
Perhaps the grimmest moment of all was the manner of his lonely death, and the even lonelier manner of his burial. At his insistence he was buried without friends or mourners or music, without elegies or eulogies, without even a coffin. For a man who wrote so many elegant words it seems especially stark that no words should mark his passing from this world. For a man who promoted the careers of so many pupils it seems especially sad that he left orders that none should attend.
This book is an attempt to explore the reasons for these dramatic changes of fortune, and to examine the significance of his lasting literary and historical legacy. It also attempts to explain how the man who inspired and charmed so many, infuriated and offended so many others, and why, in consequence, that legacy is as controversial and questionable to some as it is considerable and undeniable to others.
The isolated headstone, which marks his unattended burial spot in its neglected country churchyard, may symbolize his lonely and miserable end, but in the libraries of the world his work lives on in his still sparkling and memorable prose. And many have judged that his ultimate legacy lives on in the form of the many other books alongside his own, written by his many flourishing pupils, some of whom have gone on to match or perhaps even surpass his remarkable achievements as a communicator and populariser of serious academic history.
*** *** *** ***
This book is not a conventional biography of Jack Plumb. Even less is it an academic critique of Plumb’s publications. His books are all freely available in the libraries of the world. They can largely be left to speak for themselves. Their author, however, has mainly remained hidden from public scrutiny and this book is designed to lift the veil on an extraordinary character who lived an extraordinary life. It is a very personal memoir and personal memoirs are by definition a collection of memories recorded by one individual from their knowledge of another.
This memoir is inevitably based to a large extent on my own memories, although the story it tells is reinforced by those of many of my friends and colleagues. I make no apology, therefore, if my part of the story seems to some to be disproportionately large. In consequence it can be read in some senses simply as the story of the changing nature of a close friendship between two Cambridge academics that lasted over fifty years.
Its main intention is to do for Plumb what George Otto Trevelyan did for that earlier great historian Macaulay when he wrote “there must be tens of thousands whose interest in history and literature he has awakened and informed by his pen, and who would gladly know what manner of man has done them so great a service”. In identifying and describing “what manner of man” Jack Plumb was, it also attempts to put into perspective his academic rivalries, his personal ambitions, his prolific publications, his major role as a editor, his inspiring role as teacher, his role as a promoter of his remarkable school of famous pupils, his role as a war-time code breaker and his achievement as a Master of a Cambridge college.
Most of all it attempts to paint a portrait of a remarkable individual who did so much to change the nature and direction of travel of popular academic history, and seeks to explain why he provoked so much interest and so much controversy amongst novelists, portrait painters, fellow historians and Cambridge colleagues. It depicts a man who climbed very high from very lowly beginnings, but also alas a man who ended his life as a sad, lonely and embittered individual.
2. J.H.Plumb’s Curriculum Vitae
B.A. (London), M.A., Ph.D., Litt.D. (Cambridge), FRHistS., FBA., FSA., FRSL., Hon. Litt.D. (Leicester, East Anglia, Bowdoin College, Southern California, Westminster College, Washington University, St. Louis, Bard College, New York), Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Honorary Member of the Society of American Historians, Honorary Member of American Historical Association.
Education:
Alderman Newton’s Boys School, 1923-30
University College Leicester, 1930-33
B.A. (London) 1st Class Honours in History 1933
Cambridge University 1934-2001
Ph.D. (Cambridge) 1936
Litt.D. (Cambridge) 1957
College Career:
Christ’s College, Cambridge, matriculated October 1934
Ehrmann Research Fellow, King’s College, Cambridge, 1939-46
Christ’s College, Cambridge, 1946-2001
Fellow, 1946-2001
Steward, 1948-50
Director of Studies 1949-66
Tutor, 1950-59
Vice-Master, 1964-68
Master, 1978-82
University Career:
University Lecturer in History, 1946-62
Reader in Modern English History, 1962-66
Chairman of the History Faculty, 1966-68
Professor of Modern English History, 1966-74
War-time Career:
Foreign Office, Bletchley 1940-45
Honours and Appointments:
Honorary
