Howkins was born in Bicester on 8 August 1947 into a working-class family; his father, a Communist Party supporter, was a mechanic but a head injury sustained in World War II led him to take up less skilled worked as a store man later in life; Howkins' mother worked night-shifts in a hospital.
[1][2] After failing the eleven-plus examination, he attended Bicester Highfield Secondary Modern School; he later moved to a technical college in Banbury, but after he was expelled aged 15 he became an apprentice farm labourer.
[1] Howkins spent two years at Ruskin College,[3] before completing an undergraduate degree at the University of Oxford; history and English were his chosen subjects.
[1] In 1973, he moved to the University of Essex to begin doctoral studies;[4] three years later, he started working at the University of Sussex,[5] and only picked up his PhD studies again in the early 1980s, largely re-writing his thesis;[6] the PhD was awarded by Essex in 1982 for "'The great momentous time': Radicalism and the Norfolk farm labourer 1872–1923".
But he was also keen to demonstrate the changing nature of rural England, as it became a place of leisure in the 20th century, and as it was influenced by the mechanisation of agriculture and environmental concerns.