The author was born in Manchester, England. He has an undergraduate degree from Trinity College, Oxford and a doctorate from Queen Mary College, London. He taught at the University of The West Indies in Jamaica from 1971-1984 and has been teaching at Penn State Abington from 1984 until the present, with visiting positions (a) Iowa State University (1988-90) , (b) Queens College, CUNY, (first Gorenstein Professor, Spring 1998) and Brigham Young University (Spring 2006).