Peter Howell was born in Malta in1941 and educated at Downside and Balliol College, Oxford. For thirty-five years he taught, first in the Classics Department of Bedford College and then at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, both in the University of London.

He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Uppsala in 2016. He has always had a keen interest in architectural history, especially that of the nineteenth century, and was Chairman of the Victorian Society from 1987 to 1993.

He has written about both subjects: in classics about the epigrammatic poet Martial and in architectural history John Francis Bentley: Architect of Westminster Cathedral (Liverpool University Press, 2020). His longstanding interest in the triumphal arch links his two areas of scholarship.