Best known for his studies of the organisation of local government, the electronics industry, the BBC and the National Health Service, he has also written on a diversity of subjects ranging from his experiences as a prisoner of war in the Second World War to student unrest in the late 1960s, and from urban development to consumer behaviour and the commercialisation of leisure. His latest book, on the writings of Erving Goffman, published in 1992, was widely praised.