Career
He has lived in England for most of his life (with three years in New Zealand, 1945–1948). He turned into a linguist via Loughborough Grammar School in Leicestershire (1948–1958), Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (1958–1961) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (Doctor of Philosophy, 1961–1964). He worked with Michael Halliday as research assistant on two projects at University College London: on the grammar of scientific English with Rodney Huddleston (1964–1967), and on Linguistics and English Teaching (1967–1970).
In 1970, he was appointed lecturer at University College London, where he spent the rest of his working life, mostly in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, retiring in 2004.
He has also worked to build bridges between academic linguistics and teaching of (and about) language in United Kingdom schools.