He was educated at Nairn Academy in the North of Scotland and at Edinburgh University, where he took two degrees, in English and German. From 2000 to 2010 he was Germanic Editor of The Modern Language Review. His first book was Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (1985) and he has co-directed the Oxford Kafka Research Centre.
His most recent publication is The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790 (London 2020; New York 2021).

Volumes on Kafka and Goethe have been widely spread in OUP’s Very Short Introductions series, and his translations of Hoffmann, Heine, Moritz and Kafka have been published in the Oxford World’s Classics and Penguin Classics.