My early research was devoted primarily to improving the extragalactic distance scale, culminating in an estimate of the Hubble Constant (H0=69+/-8 km/s/Mpc) in 1995 based on HST observations of Cepheids in the galaxy M96, which is in very good agreement with modern determinations. While at Cambridge I broadened my interests, working on both nearby and distant galaxy evolution studies. In 1997 I began research on gamma-ray bursts, and this subject has been the increasing focus of my subsequent endeavours, although I continue to make contributions to the study of galaxy evolution, particularly Local Group galaxies.