John Edward Christopher Hill was the pre-eminent historian of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history, and one of the most distinguished historians of recent times. Fellow historian E.P. Thompson once referred to him as the dean and paragon of English historians.

He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II, he served in the Russian department of the British Foreign Office, returning to teach at Oxford after the war.

From 1958-1965 he was University Lecturer in 16th- and 17th-century history, and from 1965-1978 he was Master of Balliol College. He was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the British Academy. He received numerous honorary degrees over the course of his career, including the Hon. Dr. Sorbonne Nouvelle in 1979.

Hill was an active Marxist and a member of the Communist Party from approximately 1934-1957, falling out with the Party after the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprisings of 1956.

In their obituary, The Guardian wrote of Hill:

Christopher Hill…was the commanding interpreter of 17th-century England, and of much else besides.…it was as the defining Marxist historian of the century of revolution, the title of one of the most widely studied of his many books, that he became known to generations of students around the world. For all these, too, he will always be the master. []