My friend Robert Knecht, who has died aged 97, was a historian of 16th-century France. A lecturer and later professor at the University of Birmingham from the late 1950s until his retirement in 1994, he was the author of 20 monographs, and his book The French Renaissance Court (2008) was awarded the Enid McLeod prize by the Franco-British Society in 2009. He was also a co-founder and early president of the Society for the Study of French History.
Born in London, Bob was the only child of two French citizens and as a result he could speak French without any trace of an English accent. His mother, Odette Mioux, was a housewife, and her husband, Jean Knecht, worked at the French consulate.
