Leading medieval historian who taught at Balliol for 40 years and wrote the scholarly classic Chivalry
Maurice Keen’s most lasting contribution to medieval scholarship is likely to be his magnum opus, Chivalry. But for his devotion to another creation of the High Middle Ages — Balliol College, Oxford — he might have had his pick of professorships elsewhere which would have further consolidated his reputation. Instead, for 40 years he was content to remain principally an admired and inspired tutor and academic supervisor, albeit one whose intellectual diffidence and lack of worldly ambition were perhaps unexpected in a Balliol man.
He also stood apart from the main currents that directed the teaching of history at Oxford in the