David Lodge was one of the most successful and admired novelists of the second half of the 20th century, though there was always conjecture about whether he was a popular serious novelist, or a serious popular novelist.
The professor of English literature at the University of Birmingham explored the themes of academia, Roman Catholicism and sex in a series of wildly witty “campus novels” that were influenced by Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. The results were inevitably comic, often ridiculous, but also beguiling and poignant. Lodge’s influence is cited by many leading novelists, including the newly knighted Sir Alan Hollinghurst, while Anthony Burgess called him “one of the best novelists of his generation”.
A serious, even solemn figure, Lodge broke out of the carapace of