After attending the County School for Boys in Leyton, he enrolled at University College London to study botany.
This was in autumn 1939 while the students and staff had been evacuated to the premises of University College North Wales in Bangor because of the Second World War.
He was conscripted into the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers to work on radar development but ill-health meant he had to leave.
He gained employment as a science teacher at the South East London Emergency Secondary School until the end of the war.
[2] He then worked, in a voluntary capacity, to benefit the South London Botanical Institute as its honorary director until 1996 and, in collaboration with his wife, to restore its garden.
He was also involved as a committee member, journal editor or organiser of field visits with several scientific and natural history societies.