Dimitri Obolensky A Russian prince and Oxford University lecturer, knighted for his studies, has died, aged 83.
Sir Dimitri Obolensky, who was born in Petrograd in 1918, became University Reader in Russian and Balkan History in 1948.
He was appointed professor in 1962, amid fears the university would lose him to the USA because of a shortage of distinguished Slavonic scholars.
Sir Dimitri, who was knighted in 1984, became Emeritus Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1985 and was a senior associate member of St Antony's College.
His lasting contributions to scholarship were in the field of Byzantine studies. He was renowned for speaking without notes.
Born amid the Russian Revolution, his parents moved him from Russia to the Crimea and then to Paris. After his mother's marriage to Count Andrei Tolstoy, he was educated in England and France before taking a place at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Outside academia, Sir Dimitri was best known for his Penguin Book of Russian Verse, published in 1962. His last publication, in 1988, was Six Byzantine Portraits.
He married Elisabeth Lopukhin in 1947. The marriage was dissolved in 1989.
Sir Dimitri died from myeloma on December 23, last year.
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