He was the editor of "The Burns Chronicle" from 1976 to 1992, which under his stewardship reached a level of quality and diversity it has not achieved before or since. He then turned to biography, where he was less successful. Through the 1980s he worked on a biography of Robert Burns which was published in 1992 to favourable reviews and which won the Saltire Society Book of the Year Award. Subsequent biographies of Allan Pinkerton and William Wallace received more mixed reviews.