 With the exception of six years in the British Army during the Second World War, followed by four years in the Diplomatic Service at Cairo in Egypt, his entire life was devoted to the excavation of archaeological sites along the Nile Valley.After preliminary training at the Liverpool Institute of Archaeology, he went to Egypt for the first time as an assistant on the staff of the Egypt Exploration Society expedition in 1923.There he aided in the excavation of Amarna (the ancient city in Middle Egypt founded by the pharaoh Akhenaton).