My husband, Warren Chernaik, who has died aged 92, was emeritus professor of English at the University of London, where he inspired generations of students with his passion for literature and his conviction that the independence of writers as truth-tellers must be protected from political repression.
His books included major studies of John Milton, raging against the “blind mouths” of his own time (Milton and the Burden of Freedom, 2017), Milton’s friend Andrew Marvell (The Poet’s Time, 1983), Shakespeare’s history plays (The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s History Plays, 2007) and Sexual Freedom in Restoration Literature (1995), an academic bestseller.
