Robert Venturi obituary

American architect who reluctantly led the way in shaping postmodernism

David Watkin obituary

Architectural historian and supporter of the classical tradition

Other lives: Distinguished scholar of 18th-century French literature

Scholar who focused on the history of science

Ambassador to Japan in the early 1980s who became an expert on the country’s culture and history

Other lives: Travel writer fascinated by the highways and byways of Slovakia

Literary scholar dedicated to restoring the reputation of the Victorian novelist George Gissing

Other lives: Head librarian of Surrey University who was interested in new technology

Other lives: Leading authority on the origins of English surnames

Publisher and bookseller who championed some of the great avant-garde writers of the 20th century

Other lives: Varied, thoughtful and intelligent translator

Nobel prizewinning writer of novels, short stories and bleak accounts of displaced people starting from his own experience in his native Trinidad

Prolific poet whose darkly humorous fables expressed the strangeness of the world with a sense of delight

Influential scholar of the Vikings who challenged the standard view of them as invaders and destroyers

Crime novelist and broadcaster who appeared on Radio 4’s Round Britain Quiz and TV’s Question Time