After taking a first-class degree in Modern History at Balliol, Rex Whitworth served in the Grenadier Guards during the war and left the army as a Major General in 1970. From 1970–1981 he was a Bursar and Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He was made a particular study of British Military History in the mod-eighteenth century. He has written a Life of Field-Marshal Earl Ligonier and a short history of the Grenadier Guards, as well as articles on Wolfe “Butcher” Cumberland and Amherst.
In his editing of this diary of James Wood, Rex Whitworth sheds new light on this much neglected period of the history of the Royal Regiment of Artillery.