 Knight did his undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral work all at Oxford University, describing his college experience as lacking women and being in a fortress-like environment, regularly conversing in Latin.He began specializing in Latin American history because of the Cuban Revolution of Fidel Castro, which concerned the British government enough to sponsor several new Latin American centres including one at Oxford.Before his return to his alma mater, Knight taught at the University of Essex from 1973 to 1985 and then at the University of Texas at Austin, where he held the C.B.