Terry was born in York in 1927 and studied at St Peter's school in the same city.
He came to Barcelona for the first time in 1949 through a grant in order to study early Catalan monasticism.
[1] From 1950 until 1972, he taught Hispanic languages and literatures at the Queen's University Belfast, where he was professor from 1962 until 1973 (succeeding Ignacio González-Llubera).
[2] In 1976, he published an anthology of Ausiàs March's poems with English translations and coordinated a series of essays about Tirant lo Blanc.
He was president of the Anglo-Catalan Society from 1962 to 1965 and from the International Assotiation of Catalan Language and Literature from 1982 to 1988.