Ratcliffe was born in
Leek on 28 May 1927. He received a
Ph.D. in German, given for his thesis on
Heinrich von Mügeln at the University of Manchester. From 1954 he was an assistant librarian or sub-librarian in the universities of Manchester, Glasgow, and Newcastle upon Tyne. He succeeded
Moses Tyson as the
University Librarian at Manchester in 1965. From 1972 he was additionally director of the
John Rylands University Library. In 1980 he became
University Librarian at the
University of Cambridge where he remained until his retirement in 1994. He was Parker Librarian at the
Parker Library, Corpus Christi College from 1995 to 2000. Ratcliffe wrote a number of papers on the subject of librarianship including the preservation of library materials. In 1988-1989 he held the
Sandars Readership in Bibliography at Cambridge speaking on "A pre-Lutheran German psalter: A case study of the fourteenth-century translation of Heinrich von Mügeln." Ratcliffe died aged 98 on 16 April 2026. == Selected writings ==