George Scott writes:

FURTHER to Lord Harries’s appreciation of the Revd Professor Michael Screech (Obituary, 22 June): I was very fortunate to be one of his students from 1958 to 1961 at Birmingham University, where he was then a young lecturer and senior lecturer. Even then, he was recognised as an outstanding scholar, but he was also a brilliant and inspiring lecturer (the two things do not always go together). He succeeded in making the works of Rabelais and Montaigne, and the language in which they wrote, accessible to young and very green undergraduates.

In addition to his Renaissance studies, his other great academic interest was humour. Not only did he study the nature of humour (vide Bergson), but he was also a gifted practitioner.