He matriculated at the University of Oxford in 1938, but did not graduate until 1948, as he served in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War, reaching the rank of captain; he was a tank commander with Montgomery at the Battle of El Alamein.
In 1970 he published, with Clement Crisp, a book also titled Ballet for All[2] and he made seven programmes on video based on his original scripts.
[5] He has been credited as "playing a leading role in transforming the nature and status of dance education in Britain and many other parts of the world.
He was a freelance writer for The Times and for magazines specialising in dance from 1952 onwards, He co-authored The Choreographic Art (1963) with a future director of the Australian Ballet, Peggy van Praagh.
Influential reports he commissioned at the Gulbenkian Foundation included The Arts Britain Ignores (1976) by Naseem Khan.