William Julius Lowthian Plowden

The Honourable William Julius Lowthian Plowden (7 February 1935 – 26 June 2010) was a British political science academic and government advisor. Biography Plowden's parents were both public servants and he was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, where he took his doctorate. He was awarded a Harkness Fellowship at the University of California in Berkeley. On his return he was briefly in 1958 a staff writer for The Economist, then joined in 1959 with a stellar pass of the annual Civil service examination the Board of Trade. In 1965 he left the civil service when he was appointed as lecturer on government at the London School of Economics (LSE). Plowden joined Edward Heath's Downing Street think-tank the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) as a founder-member, before a short period in 1977 as an Under Secretary in the Department of Industry. Plowden then joined the Royal Institute of Public Administration as Director-General, where he stayed for ten years.