Hyde's family owned an iron and steel works, located at Stoke-on-Trent in 1930 when Kenneth Hyde was born. He was educated at Mostyn House on the Wirral, Cheshire, and the Oundle School, Northamptonshire, and then served in the Ordnance Corps. After his national service, he attended Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated with a second-class degree in modern history in 1953, followed by a Diploma in Social Anthropology. His DPhil, also from Oxford, was on medieval Italy, supervised by D. M. Bueno de Mesquita.
