I was educated at Southwell Minster Grammar School and I sang in the Cathedral choir. I then studied Fine Art at the University of Leeds under Quentin Bell, the Bloomsbury painter and biographer of his aunt Virginia Woolf. Then I took an M.A. degree in the history of European Art at the University of London, Courtauld Institute of Art, under Anthony Blunt with whom there were disagreements.

My first book was the catalogue raisonné of the French 17th century painter Georges de La Tour where the text was written by Benedict Nicolson, son of Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville West, and editor of the Burlington Magazine where I was to publish several of my discoveries. After working at the Courtauld Institute in the Witt library I became freelance setting myself up as art consultant, lecturer, exhibition organiser and author.

The main thrust of my published work was a series of monographs on a variety of 17th century painters including Poussin, Vermeer of Delft and Rembrandt. This last book was published in France in the year 2000 to considerable acclaim and translation into German. I have also organised numerous old master exhibitions starting with being on the advisory committee of the Georges de La Tour exhibition held in Paris in 1972.

I have also published catalogues of several Museum collections of old masters including those at Cheltenham, Southampton and a two Volume work covering the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. An extension of this has been work on several private collections which resulted in published catalogues culminating in the two Volume Schorr Collection in 2014 which was well-reviewed in the Burlington Magazine.