Nicholas Tarling was born in 1931. He earned his PhD at Cambridge. In 1957 he began teaching European and Asian history at the University of Queensland. In 1965 he became an associate professor of history at the University of Auckland New Zealand, going on to become a full professor in 1968. He retired from academia in 1996. He has published more than 30 books, mostly on the topic of Asian history, but also about opera and university policy.
