Born in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, he studied French at university before starting his career at the BBC, where he worked primarily as a newsreader.

There, he wrote many scripts, some comprising series on poetry and literature to be read himself, and also delivered announcements to open and close programmes including "From Our Own Correspondent".

Finding William Forsell Kirby's 1907 translation of the Kalevala in a used bookstore, he became irritated by its lack of fluidity, and resolved to read the original Finnish.

In 1977, folklorist Matti Kuusi and linguist Michael Branch, having seen these poetry translations, brought him to work together on a bilingual anthology of Finnish verse, which was released in 1977.

[2] Bosley published some verses of the Kalevala in 1985, but a full version only appeared four years later: due to its older style and ideas, the text was more challenging to work on than others.

However, he found using feet too flat, and so to find a natural-sounding metre drew on the cywydd of Middle Welsh poetry he had read as a child:[2] The only way I could devise of reflecting the vitality of Kalevala metre was to invent my own, based on syllables rather than feet… I eventually arrived at seven, five and nine syllables respectively, using the impair [sic] (odd number) as a formal device and letting the stresses fall where they would.The work took five years, with Bosley translating one hundred verses every night during shifts at the BBC.

In 1980, he was invited to become a corresponding member of the Finnish Literature Society, and the next year was made a Knight, First Class of the Order of the White Rose of Finland.

[7][8] In the United Kingdom, Bosley won prizes in competitions held by the English Goethe Society and British Comparative Literature Association.