[2][3] He was educated at Barry County School and St John's College, Cambridge (scholar and Strathcona Student, starred[2] first class degree in History 1936).
He worked at Bletchley Park 1940–42 and the Board of Trade 1942–46, during which period he still found time to carry out research at the Public Record Office and in the archives of country houses.
At the age of just thirty-five he had been appointed Chichele Professor of Economic History in the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of All Souls College.
He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa by the Universities of Wales (1971), Cambridge (1973), Pennsylvania (1975), Kent (1978), and Ulster (1988).
He was president of the Royal Historical Society (1977–1981),[7] Habakkuk married Mary Richards (died 2002),[1] whom he met during the war and who later studied History at Cambridge, in 1948.
He died, from renal failure and myelodysplasia, at the house of one of his daughters, Little Orchard, Scot Lane, Chew Stoke, in Somerset, England, on 3 November 2002.