[6] Popplewell went to Charterhouse School as a scholar, where he played cricket with Peter May and future politician Jim Prior,[7] and after spending two years of National Service in the Royal Navy,[2] he went to Queens' College, Cambridge as an exhibitioner.
[8] In 2003, Popplewell became one of the oldest mature students at the University of Oxford when he started reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Harris Manchester College.
[9][10][11] Popplewell was a right-handed wicket-keeper-batsman, playing 56 innings in 41 matches, scoring 881 runs for an average of 20.46 including two half-centuries.
He was a judge of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, vice-chairman of the Parole Board, and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.
Following the fire at Valley Parade, the Bradford City stadium, on 11 May 1985, Popplewell was chosen to chair an inquiry held under the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975.
[17] A copy of the Committee of Inquiry into Crowd Safety and Control at Sports Grounds' Interim Report is published online in PDF format by the Bradford City Fire website.
He had an argument with Home Secretary David Blunkett who was seeking to introduce mandatory minimum sentences for some serious crimes.
He made the comments in a letter to The Times following the Commons debate[21] on 17 October 2011 calling for all Cabinet papers on Hillsborough to be released.
This was in response to the publication of an article in The Guardian newspaper of an extract from a newly published book Fifty-Six: The Story of the Bradford Fire by Martin Fletcher.
The extract of the Fletcher book contained previously unpublicised information about eight earlier fires allegedly connected to the Bradford City owner and chairman, Stafford Heginbotham (who died in 1995).