After distinguishing himself on the soccer field and setting the long jump record at Queen Mary School, Basingstoke, Rowland Brown won a state scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford, where he read French and rowed for his college. He was then commissioned into the Intelligence Corps on National Service and spent a year at Cambridge studying Russian. For five years he taught at Hampton Grammar School, where he was responsible for Russian, the army section of the Combined Cadet Force and the boat club, which he launched from scratch.
Rowland Brown extended the top management team at RGS and delegated considerably to them, raising academic and sporting standards and becoming a member of  the Oxford University Delegacy of Local Examinations. Rowland Brown defended RGS against all political threats and delays to development. During the comprehensive era he continued Malcolm Smith’s fight and helped prepare a change of status to independence had that proved necessary.   He steered the school from voluntary- controlled to grant-maintained status via the Local Financial Management and Local Management of Schools programmes, without losing the school’s traditional sense of teamwork and fellowship.
Rowland Brown was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1966 and was a JP of the Wycombe bench, chairman of the Youth Panel and vice-chairman of the Juvenile Branch. He inaugurated and became chairman of the Association of Principals of VI Form Colleges. He was also elected to the National Council of the Headmasters’ Association and subsequently became chairman of the Bucks, Berks and Oxon Secondary Heads and legal secretary of the Secondary Heads’ Association. A noted National President of the SHA in 1985-6, he was a legal consultant and adviser to that organisation.
He was a member of Rotary International from 1968 and became president of the High Wycombe branch in 1990. 
The Wycombiensian tribute on his departure described him as "a truly great headmaster".