Alan Cruttenden

Alan Cruttenden was born in Peckham, south-east London, in 1936, and evacuated to Buckinghamshire in 1939. He attended Sir William Borlase’s Grammar School in Marlow. He did National Service in the Royal Navy from 1954-56, spending time in the Mediterranean and northern Europe. He then went to Pembroke College, Oxford where he took a degree in English, following the philology option which included some Old Icelandic and Old High German. He worked for Oxford University Press for five years, mainly in southern Africa, before returning to take postgraduate degrees in TEFL in Wales and in Phonetics at University College, London. He became Lecturer and later Professor of Phonetics at the University of Manchester. He was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, California in 1982. He has published around 50 research articles, mainly on child language and intonation. He edited the Journal of Child Language for seven years. He has published books on child language, intonation, English phonetics and writing systems. He retired from Manchester in 2001 and in retirement became a Fellow of the Phonetics Laboratory, University of Oxford.

Alan Cruttenden married Margaret in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) in 1963 with whom he had twin girls. Margaret died in 1995 and Alan married Valerie in 1999. They now live in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Alan played rugby for his school, rowed for his college, and later took up sailing, and, later still, bowls. He enjoyed amateur dramatics and choir singing at school and later in various places.