He has won a number of awards for his scholarship including research grants for his work on Blake, Dante, and Henry James and is a recurring face on the conference scene; four times on Dickens in 2012.
Publication of his book Opera and the Culture of Fascism (1996) was met by a number of distressed voices from the operatic world.
Tambling has a broad background in teaching ranging from Comprehensive Schools in England to lecturing, and then Professorship in Comparative Literature, at the University of Hong Kong, a position he held for over 18 years.
He is interested in education at all levels, is a prison-visitor, and likes critical approaches which question disciplinary limits in the humanities and social sciences.
Current research includes work on cities in literature and a history of the Devil; with reference to Freud, Blake and Dostoevsky.