After studying history at the Manchester Metropolitan University, I gained an MA and a PhD in the subject from the University of Manchester. My PhD thesis, ‘Coercion and Compromise: Lancashire Provincial Politics and the Creation of the English Republic, 1649-53′, was supervised by Dr C. Phillips and passed in 2005. A study of the relationship bewteen central and local government during a regime that has been often overlooked, it has resulted in the publication of four articles. Whilst working towards my PhD, I began teaching early modern history at the University of Manchester in 2002. In 2004 I became an Associate Lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan University, teaching history across a wide range of periods and geographical regions. I continued to teach at both universities until December 2007, when I was appointed Assistant Editor of the Victoria County History of Wiltshire. This long-standing project, based until 2014 at the University of the West of England, Bristol, exists to research and write the histories of Wiltshire’s parishes acrosxs the whole span of human settlement. Whilst employed by VCH Wiltshire, I undertook work to complete and publish VCH Wilts. XVIII (published in 2011), and wrote five histories of parishes in the area around Longleat (three as the sole author and two as co-author) for VCH Wilts. XIX (still unpublished). Since 2014 I have been a freelance historians, undertaking research on a contract basis for VCH projects in Gloucestershire, Hampshire and Herefordshire, as well as smaller commissions, some occasional teaching, and my own research projects.
