I qualified as a Doctor in Bristol in 1967 and did junior doctor posts in Bristol and Poole for 6 years taking the MRCP and MRCPath exams before being appointed as consultant haematologist in Bournemouth in 1974.

My interest in CLL began in 1972 when I began working with Professor George Stevenson at Southampton University. We were treating CLL and other lymphomas with an antibody called anti-idiotype. The idea was picked up by Ron Levy in Stanford and eventually this work led to the development of Rituximab. Our work on how antibody kills leukemia cells and how the structure of antibody can be altered to enhance its effect continues to this day.

In the early 1980s I began bone marrow auto transplants in Bournemouth. We were laundering bone marrow with a new antibody called CAMPATH, and during this period we performed the first peripheral blood stem cell transplant in Britain on a patient with mantle cell lymphoma.

I was made a full Professor at the University of Southampton in 1986 and I began working with George Stevenson's wife, Professor Freda Stevenson. It was her introduction of a technique to read the DNA code that enabled me to distinguish the two subtypes of CLL with mutated and unmutated immunoglobulin genes and very different survival times.

I retired from the National Health Service in 2003, but remain working half time for the University, doing research.

But my time still seems fully occupied as I am chairman of the UKCLL Forum, a member of the Gene Therapy Advisory Committee and of the National Cancer Research Institute's Clinical Studies Group for Haemato-Oncology. I also have a part-time appointment now at Kings College Hospital in London.

I have written 5 books and published well over 500 scientific articles and I am editor of the medical journal, Leukemia Research.

Outside medicine I am married with 4 grown up children. I am a member of the local Baptist church where I was a deacon, then an elder for 20 years. I read a lot of books, my favourite author is Patrick O'Brien. I listen to Classical music and I am something of a film buff. I enjoy watching cricket.