Emeritus Professor of English, University of Durham, he was born at Ipswich. After National Service in the Royal Artillery, he was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Glasgow, with an interval teaching at Loretto School, Musselburgh. He taught at the Universities of Glasgow and Leicester before going as Professor to Durham in 1978, where he was Public Orator 1989-1999. He was President of the International Association of University Professors of English 1995-1998, chairman of the Modern Humanities Research Association 1989-1999 and Vice-President of the Charles Wesley Society 1994-2003. He has published books on English Romantic poetry (1970), Browning (1973), andWordsworth (1982) .
His definitive work on The English Hymn (1997) established him as an authority on *hymnology, especially from a literary aspect. An Annotated Anthology of Hymns was published in 2002 and Awake My Soul, sub-titled 'Reflections on Thirty Hymns', in 2005. His Peake Memorial Lecture in 2005 was on 'St. Luke and the hymns of Wesley'. He served on the committee for Hymns and Psalms (1983) and was one of the editors of the Companion (1988). He was Free Church representative on the Archbishops' Commission on Church Music 1988-1992 and served on the committee for Common Praise (2000). He is currently general editor of a project to replace Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology.