[1][2] According Stephen Green, Alston 'brought an irrepressible enthusiasm' to this work and the historical bibliography it entailed: 'restless, professionally and personally, in the early 1960s he travelled throughout Europe for months in his VW Beetle, startling the keepers of libraries great and small with his insistence on the first-hand inspection of their collections'.
[3] In the assessment of Stephen Green, 'Alston was no saint, but a gallant adventurer who often broke rules (and hearts) in the intense pursuit of his truth'.
The University's obituary notes that 'he was, and throughout his career remained, an outstanding teacher and lecturer, whose energy and enthusiasm lit up his talks'.
[3][1] Alston left Leeds in 1976, becoming the editor-in-chief of what became the Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue in 1977, based at the British Library.
Amidst personal tensions with his American collaborator Henry Snyder, Alston left the project in 1989.
[1] Alston's most important work was the A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800, which he had nearly completed when he died, with twenty volumes published.