Ierne L. (Ierne Lifford) Plunket

Born in 1885, Ierne Arthur Lifford Plunket was a British author remembered for books on medieval history as well as writing for younger readers. She studied in Oxford through the Society of Oxford Home Students, and later received an MA when Oxford began awarding degrees to women.

Plunket is best known for historical works including Europe in the Middle Ages and Isabel of Castile and the Making of the Spanish Nation, 1451–1504. Her writing aimed to make complicated periods of European history readable and vivid for a broad audience, which helps explain why her books have continued to attract readers long after their first publication.

She died in 1970. A photograph of her in WRNS uniform from 1918 also survives, offering a glimpse of a life that reached beyond the page and into the wider public world of her time.