Rodney Huddleston graduated from the University of Cambridge in Modern & Medieval Languages in 1960, and earned his PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh in 1963. He held lectureships at the University of Edinburgh, University College London and the University of Reading, before moving in 1969 to the Department of English at the University of Queensland, where he worked until formally retiring in 1998. He was the winner of one of three `Excellence in Teaching' awards at the University of Queensland in 1988, and in 1990 was awarded a Personal Chair. He has written numerous articles and books on English grammar, including An Introduction to English Transformational Syntax (1976) and Introduction to the Grammar of English (1984), and was the founding editor of The Australian Journal of Linguistics (1980--1985).