- Quondam Fellow, All Souls College (from 1981)
- Fifty-Pound Fellow, All Souls College (from 1980 to 1981)
- Prize Fellow, All Souls College (from 1972 to 1979)
- Undergraduate, Balliol College, Oxford (from 1968 to 1972)
- The classical tradition, especially in the nineteenth century; Latin poetry; epic. He is currently working on a book on God, Space and City in the Roman Imagination
- A Fine Brush on Ivory: an appreciation of Jane Austen (New York: OUP, 2004)
- Westminster Abbey (Profile Books Ltd, 2004)
- Virgil’s Experience: Nature and History; Times, Names and Places (New York: OUP, 1998)
- (ed.) The Legacy of Rome: A New Appraisal (New York: OUP, 1992)
- Classical Epic: Homer and Virgil (British Classical Press, 1992)
- Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance (Harper Collins, 1991)
- Three Classical Poets: Sappho, Catullus and Juvenal (Duckworth, 1982)
- Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship 2007-10.