[1][2] While performing his National Service he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Gloucestershire Regiment on 23 April 1955,[3] and transferred to the Territorial Army on 21 September 1956,[4] and was promoted to acting lieutenant on 28 December 1956.
He was appointed Bodley's Librarian in 1986, succeeding John Jolliffe who had died in the previous year.
He retired from the Bodleian in 1996, with the title of Bodley's Librarian Emeritus,[1] and was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen's Birthday Honours.
[1] Other positions that he has held include a visiting professorship in Library Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (1985), membership of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (1986 to 1998[7][8]), and President of the Society of Archivists from 1999 to 2002.
A historian with a particular interest in the use of local source materials, his publications include Staffordshire and The Great Rebellion (1964, jointly), Victorian and Edwardian Oxford from old photographs (1971, jointly), The Diary of Thomas Turner 1754–65 (1984) and various journal articles.