Seeing the set of photographs of the Fellows of Christ’s reminded me very forcefully of the personality of J.H.Plumb, the Master, who is commemorated in two photographs which he vetoed, but which effectively show his personality – short, funny, quizzical, sometimes benign, at least to me, occasionally sarcastic, a very good writer and historian, friend of Princess Margaret and Harold Wilson.   Not everyone cared for him, but I did, not least for his passionate interest in, and writing about, eighteenth-century cultural history.

© Judith Aronson