Born in Ootacamund, India, his family returned to England, and he attended a school in Ilford and became particularly interested in archaeology. He volunteered in a number of excavations until 1976 and visited the country's chambered tombs. He studied history at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and then Magdalen College, Oxford, before he read history at the University of Bristol in 1981. Specialising in Early Modern Britain, he wrote three books on the subject: "The Royalist War Effort" (1981), "The Restoration" (1985) and "Charles the Second" (1990).