Fellow, Merton College Oxford (Tutor in History, 1971-2008; Emeritus, 2008-). Books include: Democracy and Sectarianism: A Political & Social History of Liverpool 1868-1939 (1981); Town, City, and Nation: England 1850-1914 (1983); Writers, Readers, & Reputations: Literary Life in Britain, 1870-1918 (2006); and as editor or co-editor, Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain (1987), Chronology of the Modern World 1763-1992 (1993), Chronology of the 20th Century (1995), The English Urban Landscape (2000), and A Dictionary of British and Irish History (2021). Subjects of essays and articles include: parliamentary humour in the late 19th and early twentieth centuries; Catholic converts among late 19th and early 20th century authors; ‘The bitter cry of the Edwardian middle classes’; Chinese immigration into late 19th and early 20th century Britain; scholarly publishing at OUP in the 1960s; the 1981 Toxteth riots; ‘Light reading for intellectual heavyweights’, George Brodrick; Sir Arthur Forwood; Charles Garvice; George Howson; Ralph Ward Jackson; A.A. Milne; Bob Paisley; Sir Archibald Salvidge; George Sims; Bill Shankly. From 2003 to 2006, editor of the English Historical Review.