Fellow of the British Academy since 1984 and of the Accademia dei Lincei since 2017, was a tutorial fellow of Exeter College Oxford 1966-1984 and Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge 1984-2006. He has published many articles and reviews on the transmission of classical texts, some of them reprinted with additions in Manuscripts and methods> (Rome 2011), and edited Longus's novel Daphnis & Chloe (1982), Cicero's speech Pro Quinctio (1992), Vegetius's tract on warfare (2004), and Geoffrey of Monmouth's imaginative history of Britain (2007).
