Brice was born in Richmond, Yorkshire, and studied geography at Jesus College, Oxford, interrupting his studies to serve in India during the Second World War, protecting railways near Madras and supplying maps to troops, for which he was awarded the Burma Star.
He then participated in an archaeological expedition to eastern Turkey, exploring frontier forts of the Roman empire.
Sir John Myres gave him the task of working on Linear A, and his breakthroughs were recorded in Inscriptions in the Minoan Linear Script of Class A (1961).
In 1967 he was appointed as the editor of the journal Kadmos, which focused on prealphabetic writing and the languages and cultures from which they came.
[2] and South-west Asia (A Systematic Regional Geography; vol.