After his first degree at the University of York, where he was one of the initial intake of 150 undergraduates, he did research at Peterhouse, Cambridge, into the maintenance of public order in England during the French Revolution. At this point he had to make a career decision, having been a prominent member of the National Youth Theatre as an actor during his time at university. He played the part of Enobarbus in a celebrated production of 'Anthony and Cleopatra', with Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, and as a result was offered professional roles. However, he decided to stay in academia and refused the chance to become an actor though he kept his association with the NationalYouth Theatre during summer stints as an associate director, including 'Julius Caesar' which played in Germany in 1968. He joined the Open University in 1970 as a lecturer, but since then has been a visiting fellow at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, where he advised on distance teaching and co-authored a teaching module which now forms part of a taught MA both at Griffith and the Open University. He has been visiting professor at the University of Paris VIII and at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He was elected president of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice in 1995 and has continued in the post ever since. From October to November 2003 he was visiting professor at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and from September to December 2004, visiting research fellow at the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian University, Canberra. He has maintained a research interest in the revolutionary and Napoleonic era, but since the early 1980s his work has focused primarily on the history of crime and policing. He co-directs the Old Bailey Proceedings Online project. In 2000 he was awarded a D.Litt. by the Open University for his published work in the history of crime and policing. He is director of the European Centre for the Study of Policing, and co-director of the International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research.
