After attending Southend High School for Boys, he took up a place at the University of Bristol,[2] where he gained a BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 1947.

[3] From 1952 to 1954, he was a lecturer at the University of Bristol, and between 1958 and 1961 he taught at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

[2] In the early 1980s, he was Chairman of the Northern Ireland Higher Education Review Group, which was tasked with producing a report called the Chilver Report on how to unify the Initial teacher education (ITE) used in Northern Ireland.

[7] In 1983, he succeeded Lord Campbell as Chairman of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC).

[2] In 1987, he was made a life peer as Baron Chilver, of Cranfield in the County of Bedfordshire,[14] and he was introduced to the House of Lords on 15 July.