Judith Margaret Brown was born in India, the daughter of the Rev Wilfred George Brown and Joan Margaret Adams. Educated in Bristol, Kent and Dorset, she came to Girton to read History in 1962. She took a PhD in 1968; and she was a Research Fellow at Girton, 1968-70, a Fellow 1970-71, and Director of Studies in History 1969-71. On leaving Girton, she lectured in History successively in Manchester and Oxford, becoming Beit Professor of the History of the Commonwealth and a Professorial Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1990. She was ordained deacon in 2009 and priest in 2010 in the Church of England. She married Peter Diggle in 1984. She has an honorary doctorate of Social Science from Natal University (2000), and was elected to the Academia Europaea in 2011. [These notes have been derived from the Girton College Register and from Judith Brown herself.]