Born on 8 July 1914 in Sheffield, he grew up in Lewisham, where his family experienced the deprivation of the post-war slump. He won a major scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he read Chemistry and came under Methodist influence at Wesley Memorial Church and in the John Wesley Society. Trained for the ministry at Wesley House, Cambridge, he graduated with first class honours, won the Junior Scholefield Prize and the Carus Greek Testament Prize and in 1940 was awarded the Finch Scholarship. From 1945 to 1949 he worked as Assistant Head of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC, before being appointed NT Tutor at Didsbury College in 1949, moving with it to Bristol in 1951. When the Department of Theology was formed at Bristol University in 1965, he became the first Professor of Theology and built up a lively department. From 1976 until retirement in 1979 he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University. In 1974 he gave the Peake Memorial Lecture entitled 'Trust and Obey'. As well as his major study of the meaning of the death of Christ in the NT, Dying, We Live (1990), he wrote commentaries on Galatians and Philippians (1957), Philippians and Thessalonians (1967), the Johannine Epistles (1984), John's Gospel (1990) and Romans (1996). He died in Bristol on 10 June 2005.