In the Second World War he served as an officer in the Welsh Guards, chiefly in intelligence (Special Operations Executive (SOE) and MI6 After the war he briefly returned to Oxford University where he became a fellow and Dean of Wadham College.

He thereafter taught philosophy at London University from 1946 until 1959, when he also started to appear on radio and television.

For an academic, Ayer was an unusually well-connected figure in his time, with close links to 'high society' and the establishment.

Presiding over Oxford high-tables, he is often described as charming, but at times he could also be intimidating.

What is new is the way in which the interest in travel medicine has developed across the science–social science divide and has now become one strand of a wider practitioner and academic interest in tourist well-being.

With the exception of studies on technology and tourism and environmental science and tourism (e.g.

Ayer, was a British philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

Ayer was educated at Ascham St Vincent's School, a former boarding preparatory school for boys in the seaside town of Eastbourne in Sussex, in which he started boarding at the comparatively early age of seven for reasons to do with the First World War, and Eton College, a boarding school in Eton (near Windsor) in Berkshire.

It was at Eton that Ayer first became known for his characteristic bravado and precocity.

There has been considerable growth in interest in the field of travel medicine and the intersection with Tourism Studies since the 1990s.

Yet this interest from a medical perspective is not new as a review of , one of the most well-established medical journals, shows.