The two history tutors who marked his papers recognised his ability and offered him a place in order to forestall any chance he might go to the University of Cambridge.

[4] In 1931 Hill took a prolonged holiday in Freiburg, Germany, where he witnessed the rise of the Nazi Party, later saying that it contributed significantly to the radicalisation of his politics.

In the following year he won the Lothian Prize,[4] and he graduated with a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in modern history in 1934.

Whilst at Balliol, Hill became a committed Marxist and joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in the year he graduated.

[3] After returning to England in 1936 he accepted a teaching position as an assistant lecturer at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Cardiff.

[3] Following the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the British Army, initially as a private in the Field Security Police.

[8] He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on 2 November 1940 with the service number 156590.

His first academic book, Economic Problems of the Church from Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament,[3] appeared in 1956.

Like many of his later books, it was based on his study of printed sources accessible in the Bodleian Library and on secondary works produced by other academic historians, rather than on research in the surviving archives.

Inez Hill, then 23, was the daughter of an Army officer, Gordon Bartlett, and the ex-wife of Ian Anthony Waugh.

[3] Hill's second wife was Bridget Irene Mason (née Sutton),[11] whom he married on 2 January 1956.