Obituary: Professor Geoffrey Smithers

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GEOFFREY SMITHERS made important contributions to the study of Early English.

Born in South Africa in 1909, he was educated at Durban High School and at what was then Natal University College. In 1930 he gained a Rhodes Scholarship which took him to Hertford College, Oxford, where in 1933 he achieved a First in the Final Honours School of English Language and Literature. After a brief spell of teaching at London University, first at King's College, then at University College, he returned to Oxford in 1940 as Lecturer in English Language.

He subsequently became Senior Lecturer in English Language, and in 1954 Reader in Medieval English and a Professorial Fellow …