Tony Read took an honours degree at St Catherine's College, Oxford University in 1962. He was a teacher in England for a year before working for 8 years as a secondary school teacher in Ghana from 1963-70. From 1970-79 he worked as Deputy Head of OUP's UK Education Department and then as Managing Director of OUP New Zealand and Head of Marketing in the OUP International Division with direct responsibility for Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa before being appointed as Director of the UK's Book Development Council, which was the overseas arm of the UK Publishers' Association. During this period he pioneered textbook policy work for the WB in West Africa. In 1989 he founded International Book Development with 4 colleagues as an independent consultancy company specializing in learning and teaching materials provision in both hard copy and digital formats oriented specifically towards Africa and other developing and transitional economies. Since then he has worked in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, The Middle-East, Eastern and Central Europe, Central Asia and the Former Soviet Union and in the Indian sub-Continent and South-East Asia. He has worked in education in Africa for more than 50 years and has published articles and books on different aspects of education and the provision of affordable learning and teaching materials for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, DFID, the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) and Encyclopaedia Britannica. He currently works as an independent education specialist affiliated to International Education Partners in the UK.