He was born in the West Riding, Yorkshire and educated at Manchester University, where he studied history.
[1] After his death, The Times said: Aspinall was an exact scholar, with an unrivalled knowledge of the primary source materials for his period, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries of British political history.
He developed his academic life to the publication of impeccable edited texts of the major correspondence of the period, so that every historian working that field, now and in the future, will be heavily in his debt.
[1]In his biography of George IV, E. A. Smith said: "My principal academic debt must be to the late Arthur Aspinall...who gave me endless encouragement.
Doubtless he would have disapproved of some of my ideas about George IV but, such as it is, I offer my present work as a small tribute to his memory".