Spent most of his life in or near London, exceptions being a year as a student in Paris, most of the 1939-45 war in Wales, and three periods in American universities as visiting professor. He is a Fellow of University College, London, and was formerly Reader in French at the university. Since preparing his first Penguin Classic in 1949, he has been intensely interested in the problems of translation, about which he has written, lectured and broadcast, and which he believes is an art rather than a science. His numerous translations for the Penguin Classics include Zola's Germinal, Thérèse Raquin, The Debacle, L'Assommoir and La Bitê Humaine; Diderot's The Nun, Rameau's Nephew , and D'Alembert's Dream; Maupassant's Pierre and Jean; Marivaux's Up From the Country; Constant's Adolphe; Prévost's Manon Lescaut, La Rochefoucauld's Maxims and Madame de Sévigné's Selected Letters.