My expertise and principal area of research experience is in Quaternary science, with emphasis on fluvial sequences. My early work was on the River Thames, which has a Quaternary sequence of international importance, and its tributary, the Medway (the river that divides those males born in the county of Kent into Kentish Men and Men of Kent: I number myself amongst the latter). This grounding provided a platform for a number of initiatives aimed at broadening my research into an international sphere, once I became established in Durham. My Earth-science interests have always overlapped with the oldest divisions of the archaeological record, perhaps because the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic archives from the Thames system are so extensive; my research in this area led to the award of the Henry Stopes Memorial Medal of the Geologists' Association in 2003, for 'on the Prehistory of Man and his geological environment'.