 After attending Eton College, he studied classics at King's College, Cambridge, where he gained a double first.His 1934 exposé, "An Enquiry into the Nature of Certain Nineteenth Century Pamphlets", co-written with Graham Pollard, exposed the forgeries of books and pamphlets by Harry Buxton Forman, a distinguished executive editor of Keats and Shelley, and Thomas J.Wise, one of the world's most prominent book collectors.