Norman Blake (academic)

Norman Francis Blake (19 April 1934 – 29 July 2012) was a British academic and scholar specialising in Middle English and Early Modern English language and literature on which he published abundantly during his career. Norman Blake was born in Ceará, Brazil, where his English father worked as a banker at the Bank of London and South America. His mother was half-Brazilian and half-German. In 1938, when he was four years old, he was sent to boarding school in Surrey and then to Magdalen College School in Brackley, Northamptonshire, in 1944. The outbreak of World War II meant that he was not able to see his parents for eight years. Two years after the end of the war his older brother, who attended the same boarding school, died in an accident. In 1953 he went up to study at Magdalen College where his tutors for Medieval English were, amongst others, C. S. Lewis and J. A. W. Bennett, and for Old Icelandic Gabriel Turville-Petre. During the academic year 1956–1957 he studied Old Icelandic manuscripts at the newly established Arnamagnæan Institute, part of the University of Copenhagen. He finished his studies with a BLitt in 1959. Following his studies at Oxford, he was appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Liverpool where he stayed until 1973, interrupted only by an interval as visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 1963–1964. In 1973 Blake was appointed to the Chair of English Language at the University of Sheffield, becoming head of the Department for English Language and Linguistics, a post he held until 1998. When the Department of English Language and Linguistics was amalgamated with the Department of English Literature, Blake moved to De Montfort University, Leicester, taking up a research professorship. Norman Blake married Susan Valery Miles at Liverpool in 1965. The couple adopted a daughter, Dorinda, born in 1973. He was an ardent user of public transport and enjoyed hiking, particularly in the Peak District. In May 2004 Norman Blake suffered a massive stroke severely restricting his movement and speaking capabilities.