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I read linguistics at the University of Leeds, UK, then qualified as a librarian, but only briefly worked as one. I then returned to the study of linguistics, obtaining my MA and PhD at the University of Lancaster, concentrating especially on stylistics, the application of linguistics to literary criticism. Within stylistics I am recognised as an expert on the phonetics of poetry - rhythm, metre and intonation - and am regularly asked to referee journal articles in the field. More recently I have become interested in typography, and its place in the linguistic analysis of texts, and have given several papers on this.
My other main interest is in the twentieth century administration of my native county of Middlesex, near London, on which I have undertaken archival research. As in administrative unit Middlesex was abolished when I was not quite 2 years old; its fascination for me is partly that it is out of reach of my memory, but only just: much of what I find, compared to my experience, is intriguingly "the same only different". Another fascination is that what was until about 1914 a rural county, whose hayfields fed London's horses, had by 1939 become a suburban one which housed London's commuters: the metropolis had swallowed it up in a generation, and few people now would regard it as anything other than part of London.
I am a regular writer and participant in conferences in both fields, having been in essence an independent scholar since finishing formal education.