My colleague Robert Lee, who has died aged 78, began a distinguished career as an economic historian with his Oxford DPhil thesis of 1972 on population and social change in Bavaria (1750-1850), later published as a book.
It drew on continental European historiographical methods relating family formation to local economies and social organisation. Appointed as lecturer in economic history at Liverpool University later that year, Robert spent the next four decades there, punctuated by visiting posts in Europe and the US.
