Robert Latham, cbe, ma, fba was born in Audley, Staffordshire. Educated at Cambridge, he was Reader in History in the University of London at Royal Holloway College from 1947 to 1968 when he went to the University of Toronto as Professor of History. From 1970 he was a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, where, as Pepys Librarian until 1982, he had charge of the remarkable collection of books, prints and manuscripts which Pepys left to his old College. He devoted the greater part of his life to the study of the Diary, and died in January 1995.
Linnet Latham, his wife, worked with her husband during the compilation of the Index and Companion volumes of the definitive edition of The Diary of Samuel Pepys.