He worked as an apprentice antiquarian bookseller and cataloguer in the second-hand section at Bowes & Bowes bookshop,[lower-alpha 3] 1 Trinity Street (now Cambridge University Press), between 1929 and 1933 where he was able to pursue his passion for bibliography.[15] During his employment there, he spent much of his lunchtimes, evenings and weekends, at the Botany School and Botanic Garden.[8][11] This was at a time when botany was thriving at Cambridge under the leadership of Seward and Humphrey Gilbert-Carter.[13]