 Born and raised in Harborne (now a suburb of Birmingham), in the United Kingdom, he was educated at Clifton College and then at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.After a brief period teaching at Rossall School, he went back to Oxford where he taught at St John's College until 1967.In that year, he moved to the United States to take up a professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught until his death in 1988.