In 1991 he won the
Royal Historical Society's Alexander Prize, and
Cambridge University's
Thirlwall Prize for historical research. He has been a
Fellow of
Selwyn College since 1988, and he became a College Associate Professor in 2024. He has served as a Director of Studies in History since 1992 and a Postgraduate Tutor since 2004. He has also held several other offices within the College, including Admissions Tutor (1992-2003),
Praelector (1994-2006), and Secretary to the College Council and Governing Body (2018–20). He began teaching in the Faculty of History at Cambridge in 1990 and he has been an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty since 1995. He served as Convenor of the Directors of Studies in History from 2006 to 2010. He also teaches regular weekend, day-school and summer school courses for Cambridge's
Institute of Continuing Education. He has taught on the Institute's annual History Summer Programme every year since 1993, and he was the Programme Director for fourteen years (2005-19). He was a member of the Institute's Management Board from 2005 to 2008, and he was an Affiliated Lecturer of the Institute from 2012 to 2019. He was an Associate Editor and Research Associate for the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (
Oxford University Press, 2004), to which he also contributed twenty-three articles. From 1993 to 2003 he was co-editor of the
Cambridge University Press A-level History series
Cambridge Perspectives in History, in which thirty books were published. More recently, he was co-editor of the
Cambridge University Press series aimed at the
AQA specifications for A-level History, in which eighteen books were published in 2015-16. He was an Associate Editor of the
Journal of British Studies from 2014 to 2017. He was a
visiting professor at the
University of Chicago in 1991, and at
Kyungpook National University,
Daegu, South Korea, in 2004. He served as an External Examiner for the
University of Leicester (2007–10), and for the
University of Hull (2012–17). He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1992, and he has been President of the Cambridge History Forum since 1997. Over the course of his career so far, in addition to teaching hundreds of undergraduates, he has also supervised over forty postgraduate students. These include nine who successfully completed their Cambridge PhD dissertations under his supervision. He has taught in schools as well as universities. During his gap year in 1982, he spent two terms teaching at
Framlingham College Prep School, and was Acting Head of History for the second term. In 1986, he taught at
Hinchingbrooke School, Huntingdon, for his Cambridge PGCE teaching practice term. He was an A-level History Examiner for the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board from 1986 to 1990, and since 1988 he has given lectures in over a hundred schools and sixth-form colleges. He served as a Governor of
Eastbourne College (1993-2015) and also as a Trustee of
Oakham School (2000–12). He was a member of the Cambridgeshire
Records Society Committee from 1998 to 2009. He served on the Management Committee of the
Cromwell Museum in
Huntingdon from 2009 to 2015. He was a Trustee of the Cromwell Association from 2012 to 2015, and in 2024 he was elected a Vice-President of the Association. ==Chief publications==