I am a part-time tutor for the University of Oxford Department of Continuing Education and currently Course Director for the Advanced Diploma in English Local History. For many years I taught for the Workers’ Educational Association. I give many talks to local societies. My teaching and lecturing is based on my own research in local and social history. I also undertake freelance historical and family research. After many years based in the English Midlands, I now live in North Wales.
I took a degree in Historical Studies at the University of Warwick, before gaining an M.A. and a Ph.D. at the Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester. My doctoral thesis was on Warwickshire charities. While studying at Leicester I worked part-time at Warwick Castle as a guide. I was Curator of 78 Derngate, the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed house in Northampton from 2002-2005. I then worked for the Victoria County History Trust in Herefordshire for over ten years. During this time, I wrote a history of the market town of Ledbury and contributed to a number of parish histories.