A TOWERING figure in Medieval literature has died aged 94.

Eric Gerald Stanley was Oxford’s Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Old English emeritus, succeeding JRR Tolkien in that role.

He authored several books and innumerable articles and is broadly acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s leading authorities on Medieval literature.

The longtime editor of Oxford’s formidable Notes and Queries, Prof Stanley arrived in Oxford after his parents fled Nazi Germany.

He also made significant contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary despite never being a fully fledged member of staff.

Prof Stanley was born in Germany in 1923. His family moved to England in 1934 to escape a rising tide of Nazi persecution.

He was admitted to University College, Oxford, seven years later where he obtained his BA.

After teaching at the University of Birmingham for several years, he was appointed Professor of English at Yale University in 1975.

Two years later he was elected to a fellowship at Pembroke and appointed Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor, a post he held for 15 years before being elected to emeritus status.

Though he was never part of Oxford English Dictionary staff, the dictionary was part of his academic life since his undergraduate days in the 1940s.

When work on a complete revision of the OED began in the 1990s, Prof Stanley played a key advisory role.

He then embarked on what amounted to almost a further quarter century of close comment on dictionary proofs, now embracing all OED entries that contained any material that dated back to Old English or early Middle English.

Fiscally conservative but socially liberal, Prof Stanley was known to forge deep friendships wherever he went.

The most important scholars of his generation were members of his circle, including such luminaries as Tolkien, CS Lewis, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Harold Bloom, Dorothy Whitelock and Helmut Gneuss.

He was known for being elegantly dressed at all times and had a keen eye fro quality, which contributed to him amassing an impressive collection of Renaissance prints.

Prof Stanley possessed a passion for life and friends said with him, 'practicalities always yielded to adventure'.

He took annual trips car trips to Italy with his beloved wife of more than 50 years and later solo, a tradition that continued into his 90s.

One of Prof Stanley’s former students said upon hearing the news of his death: “With Eric’s passing, Oxford has lost an irreplaceable link to the best of its history, to a time when students earnestly believed in the capacity of ideas to change the world and in their own ability to dream them up.

“Eric modelled the unlimited potential of imagination in everything he did.”

The flags at Pembroke College were flying at half mast last week in response to the news.