[3] Brett was educated at Ampleforth College, where he was taught art by sculptor John Bunting and introduced to the work of Eric Gill and David Jones.
For two years, he lived in Taos, New Mexico near his great-aunt, painter Dorothy Brett, receiving grant support from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.
[5] Brett illustrated books for The Folio Society, including Byron, Keats, Shelley, Clarissa, Jane Eyre, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Middlemarch, and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
[6] With Barbarian Press of British Columbia, Brett co-produced a fine print edition of Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre which aimed to ‘stage the play on the page’ using 98 images on over 140 blocks.
[citation needed] Brett wrote six books and published numerous essays and reviews on the history, practice and condition of wood engraving, including regular contributions to the Society of Wood Engravers newsletter Multiples, and the journals Parenthesis, the journal of the Fine Press Book Association,[9] and Printmaking Today, for which he was a member of the editorial board as well as a contributor.