Sir John Plumb : the hidden life of a great historian : a personal memoir /
by Neil McKendrick.
- x, 274 pages, xiv pages of plates : illustrations, photographs (chiefly colour).
"Sir John (Jack) Harold Plumb (1911 – 2001) was a great British historian. He led an extraordinary life of startling contrasts, much of it cloaked in secrecy. This memoir attempts to lift that cloak. The 'manner of the man' that emerges from this book is as fascinating as it is surprising. This memoir depicts a startlingly revelatory portrait of a complex and controversial man who moved from poverty in Leicester to great affluence. This is a very personal account written by Neil McKendrick, a fellow historian and one [of] his oldest and closest friends. Plumb’s personality was sufficiently beguiling to attract the attention of four significant novelists who left six vivid if unflattering fictional versions of him – depicting him as a ruthless charmer, a serial bisexual philanderer and, most bizarrely of all, as a murderer planning a further murder. In truth the real man needed no fictional elaboration to make him unusually interesting. In fact his life is often astonishing. He achieved such international eminence that, on the direct order of the US President and after a unanimous vote in Congress, the Union flag was flown over the American Congress on his 80th birthday to do him honour. In addition to his academic work, during the Second World War Plumb worked in the code-breaking department of the Foreign Office at Bletchley Park. He was Master of Christ's College from 1978-82, and was knighted in 1982"--