Nicholas Mann has recently retired at the end of a career spent entirely in universities, of which he has a long and varied experience. He took a BA in modern and (mostly) medieval languages and literature at Cambridge, where he also did a PhD. His first teaching post was a lectureship at the University of Warwick (1967-1972); he was then Fellow and Tutor of Pembroke College Oxford for eighteen years, acting on the way as Dean of Graduate Students, and Senior Tutor, and in an extracurricular capacity as Chairman of the Council of the Museum of Modern Art
In 1990 he was appointed Director of the Warburg Institute in the University of London, shifting the focus of his attention to the nurturing of research. Eleven years later he was appointed Dean of London University's School of Advanced Study, responsible for the ten humanities and social science research institutes at the heart of the University. In 2003 he took on the additional duties of a Pro-Vice-Chancellor, the most onerous of which consisted of the care of seven major research libraries
He has whenever possible pursued his own research, mainly into early Italian humanism and the scholarly life of the poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374), on which he has lectured in a dozen countries; most of his publications lurk unattended in learned journals; many are in French or Italian. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1992, and from 1999 to 2006 served as its Foreign Secretary and Vice-President. He remains Vice-President of ALLEA (the federation of European Academies).
He was appointed CBE in 1999, awarded an Hon. DLitt. by the University of Warwick in 2006, and an Honorary Fellowship by Pembroke College Oxford in 2007. Since retiring he has lived in France with his wife, the writer Helen Stevenson, and two young daughters; he has two adult children by a previous marriage.