Nick Howard was born in Marylebone, London, in [1932/33] the son of Thomas, a clerk of works, and Tusha (nee Bravo), who worked at one of the first Marie Stopes clinics.

He worked as a tutor and lecturer in the Adult Education Division (later the Department for Lifelong Learning) of the University of Sheffield from 1964 to 1997. He served in the Merchant Navy for the first ten years of his working life and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1964. In the field of Adult Education, he worked on the Postgraduate Diploma in Art Therapy, the Management of Voluntary Organisations Masters Programme, for the Workers’ Educational Association, and on the TUC Day release courses in the steel and mining industries. He carried out research for Granada Television, for the International Maritime Organisation, and the International Maritime Lecturers Association, which took him to Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Cadiz, Hamburg, Helsinki, Rostock and Warnemünde, during which he submitted a research proposal to the Ministry of Transport (Marine Division). His earlier research work includes essays on the history of the steelworkers’ unions, a study of the Puddlers’ Unions in the 1860s in the International Journal of Social History, and a study on teaching art therapy in Studies in Adult Education.

Nick Howard died in September 2016.