My friend and former colleague at the University of Essex, Gordon Brotherston, who has died aged 83, was a scholar in the field of Native American literature.
Born in Chester, Gordon was the son of Percy Brotherston, an insurance agent, and Isabel (nee Smith), and went to Birkenhead school in Merseyside. After studying Spanish at the universities of Leeds, where he met his first wife, Gisela Langsdorf, and Cambridge, he joined the newly established department of literature at the University of Essex in 1965, working there for more than two decades before moving in 1990 to Indiana University and then Stanford University.
