I went to school at the Priory修道院Grammar School, Shrewsbury什鲁斯伯里, then did my first degree at Oxford (Brasenose College), starting with Classics古典文学and going on to graduate in Psychology and Philosophy. This was followed by postgraduate courses in Teaching English Overseas (Manchester University) and in Phonetics语音学 (University College London). I was appointed to the Linguistic语言的Science Department of the University of Reading as a lecturer in 1968 and taught phonetics there until 1978, gaining my PhD哲学博士while working there. I then moved to the University of Leeds to become Senior Lecturer in Phonetics in the Department of Linguistics & Phonetics. I was Secretary of the International Phonetic Association from 1986 to 1992. Later, I moved to the Department of Psychology at Leeds University, where I was appointed任命 Professor of Cognitive认识的Psychology. I returned to Reading University in 1994 as Professor of Phonetics. My main interest now is in the phonetics of English, where my publications include English Phonetics and Phonology and the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, both published by Cambridge University Press. A more general book is Phonetics (Oxford University Press). I also have research interests in speech perception观念 and in the computer analysis of speech, and have held a number of research grants授予 for work in automatic speech recognition and in large-scale computer-readable speech databases. On my retirement in September 2003, the University of Reading awarded me the position of Emeritus名誉退休的Professor of Phonetics.

I have also taught in other countries for shorter periods. In 1962 I worked for six months as an assistant language teacher (Assistant d’Anglais, with officer rank) for the French Navy at their communications and radar establishment on the island of Porquerolles. For the academic学术的year 1975-6 I taught (on leave from Reading University) in the Department of English at the University of Sevilla, Spain. I have been a visiting speaker in many countries around the world, including Algeria, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia and USA.

Publications: You can see a list of my publications here.

Life: Married Helen in 1966; two sons (Sam and Matt), four grandchildren. We have moved from Reading and now live about half the year in our new house in Norwich and half in our second home in a village in the Languedoc郎格多克region of the south of France. For outdoor activities, I am keen热衷的on walking, running, cycling and sailing. Indoors, I love classical music. I am also an old car enthusiast热衷者– you can see pictures of my 1931 Riley here. We go to a lot of classical music concerts and films. Finally, we have always been keen on travel and camping, and have a camper-van.