Since retirement in 2013, he has been researching the history of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and has been writing a book on the Rivonia Trial, which led to Nelson Mandela's imprisonment. In 2015-6 he was awarded the Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow Fellowship, an "annual fellowship designed to encourage the completion of works in modern history and biography which combine academic scholarship and a wider public appeal", at St Antony's College, Oxford, to work on his book "Bram Fischer QC and the Unsung Heroes of the Struggle Against Apartheid 1960–1966" ( unpublished).