Peter joined the English Department of the University of Wales, Bangor, as an Assistant Lecturer in October 1964, but his previous career (Oxford First Class Honours in English, brief period in the Dominican Order, and national service in the Royal Air Force which included duty on Christmas Island during the atomic test explosions in the Pacific) already demonstrated the scholarship, integrity and fascination with violent history that has dominated his academic career. His passion for Malory's created and contextual worlds seems entirely appropriate, as does his living and working in a part of Britain so receptive to Arthurian history and myth.

Peter's academic career at the University of Wales, Bangor shows the steady recognition by others of his talents. He became a Lecturer in 1967, when he received his Oxford B. Litt., a Senior Lecturer in 1978, Reader in 1991, and was awarded a personal chair in 1995. During this time he served on numerous college and university committees, acted as external examiner for undergraduates at Trinity College, Dublin, Teesside University and Oxford, and for postgraduate degrees at the universities of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, London, East Anglia, Macquarie, Oxford, York and Sydney. He was a Specialist Subject Advisor for the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, held a visiting fellowship for the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, organized and taught in summer schools on the Arthurian legend for the University of California, organized conferences for the International Arthurian Society, served as a member of the editorial board of Arthuriana, and became first a trustee and then a director of the Eugène Vinaver Trust.