As part of the design effort for a 14MeV neutron spectrometer for the Joint European Torus (JET), computer codes were developed to calculate the response of a proton recoil telescope comprising a proton radiator film mounted in front of a proton detector. The codes were used to optimise the geometrical configuration in terms of efficiency and resolution, bearing in mind the constraints imposed by the proposed application as a JET neutron diagnostic for the Deuterium-Tritium phase. A prototype instrument was built according to the optimised design, and tested with monoenergetic 14MeV neutrons from the Harwell 500keV Van de Graaff accelerator. The measured energy resolution and absolute efficiency were found to be in acceptable agreement with the calculations. Based on this work, a multi-radiator production version of the spectrometer has now been constructed and successfully deployed at JET.