He was educated at Cambridge University from 1949 to 1952, and as a Henry Fellow and Fulbright Scholar at the Yale School of Drama from 1952 to 1953.
As an Associate Artist and Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1966, he has designed 31 productions for the company, in particular productions of Troilus and Cressida, and Richard II, directed by John Barton; The Merry Wives of Windsor, Pericles, Prince of Tyre and Love's Labour's Lost, directed by Terry Hands and Enemies, Summerfolk, The Lower Depths and The Zykovs all by Maxim Gorky, directed by David Jones.
In 1978, he designed the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita in partnership with Tazeena Firth, directed by Harold Prince.
From 2014 until 2016, he was Joint Artistic Director and Co-Designer of the permanent Exhibition of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death on the site of New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon.
[3] The variety of his work, and its evolution over 50 years, demonstrated a constant embrace of the theatre as a live, collaborative and ephemeral art form.