Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861–1922) was an English scholar and critic, the first holder of the chair of English literature at Oxford, which he occupied from 1904 until his death. He had earlier taught at Aligarh in India, Liverpool and Glasgow, and his books on Style, Milton, Wordsworse, Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson were admired for their wit and plain good sense. Knighted in 1911, he was chosen after the First World War to write the official history of British air power, and the first volume of The War in the Air appeared in 1922, shortly before he died of typhoid contracted on a visit to the Middle East.