[2] In 1989 was appointed senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Affairs at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

[7] He joined the University of Exeter as director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, then situated at Pool, near Redruth, in 1991 but now at the Penryn Campus.

In 2013 he was elected an Hon Fellow of the prestigious Australian Academy of the Humanities, shortly before stepping down as director of the Institute of Cornish Studies.

Among his other books are Regional Australia and the Great War: "The Boys from Old Kio" (University of Exeter Press, 2012), and a History of Sussex, published in 2017.

[10] Payton was made a Bard of Gorseth Kernow in 1981, taking the Bardic name Car Dyvresow ('Friend of Exiles').

Rowse and Cornwall : a paradoxical patriot won the Gorseth's Holyer an Gof trophy for best publication.