My father, Roger Sales, who has died after a short illness, aged 72, was a pioneer in the field of interdisciplinary studies that prospered in the new universities of the 1960s, not least at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, where he took his BA degree, and later returned to teach for 27 years. A scholar equally of English literature and of history, he delighted in bringing the two together in writing and teaching, and became UEA’s first professor of English studies.
Born in Chesterfield, one of three children of Katharine (nee Adams), a teacher, and William Sales, who worked for the National Coal Board, Roger attended Bradfield college, in Berkshire, following his uncle Richard Adams, author of Watership Down. At UEA he took a first in history, incorporating liberal elements, already, of literature and philosophy; it was a logical step from there to target as his PhD supervisor, at Cambridge, the great interdisciplinary scholar Raymond Williams. This alliance led in 1975 to a very solid thesis on The Literature of Labour and the Condition of England Question 1730-1860.
