[2] Clark was educated at Balliol College, Oxford and graduated (Modern History first class) in 1966.
He was then lecturer, reader and later professor of economic and social history at the University of Leicester.
[3] In 1989, he was co-founder (with Bernard Lepetit and Herman Diederiks) of the European Association for Urban History and served as its treasurer from 1989 to 2010.
[5] He has contributed to a number of publications, including the Cambridge Urban History of Britain.
He was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2011 and the Royal Belgian Academy (Flemish) in 2015.