Robert McMillan was born in Paisley in 1941. He moved with his family to Leigh in Lancashire in 1947. After a degree in history at the University of Leeds in 1963, he worked in schools and in  museums.

“Teazles and Teazle Men” is an outcome of a survey in the 1970s of a number of small traditional trades that still supplied the wool textile industries in the West Riding of Yorkshire with specialised goods and services. These included the manufacturing of textile chalks, reed and heald making, skep making and the production of specialised leathers for textile machines.

One aim of the book has been to rescue the teazle trade from its sometimes quaint, folksy image and to show in detail the reality of a business influenced increasingly in this country by the needs of the Yorkshire market since the eighteenth century and latterly controlled by a small group of  teazle merchants in Leeds and Huddersfield.

One aim of the book has been to rescue the teazle trade from its sometimes quaint, folksy image and to show in detail the reality of a business influenced increasingly in this country by the needs of the Yorkshire market since the eighteenth century and latterly controlled by a small group of  teazle merchants in Leeds and Huddersfield.