MARK Whittow, who has died aged 60, was an inspirational Oxford professor who could teach anything but specialised in Byzantine Studies and was much-loved by his students and colleagues.

Following his death in a car crash on the M40 just before Christmas, leading academics, former students and close friends paid tribute to the ‘witty and brilliant’ professor.

In November it was announced he would be the next Provost of Oriel College, a role he would have taken up in September this year.

He said his chief achievement over his career was ‘to foster a happy community of enthusiastic young historians.’

Mark Whittow was born in Cambridge on August 24, 1957, to parents John, a chartered accountant, and Joan Whittow.

When he was 10 his father died and he won a scholarship, set aside for boys who had lost a parent, to Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire.

After leaving the school in 1976 he went to Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied history.

He completed a first-class degree and was the only student on his course to write an optional thesis on 17th century English history.

But he admitted Byzantium – an ancient Greek city and colony – Turkey, Persia, the Crusades and the lure of Near Eastern archaeology was ‘all too much fun’ and stayed on for a doctorate in Byzantine history and archaeology.

In 1984 he became a research fellow and lecturer at Oriel College before brief spells at Reading University and King’s College, London.

Due to the scarcity of primary sources from Byzantium, Dr Whittow conducted several field projects and expeditions to explore its culture and aid his research and teaching.

Through the 1990s he worked in Turkey and Jordan, surveying Byzantine castles and helping to administer the Council for British Research in the Levant and the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.

In 1998 he was elected to a teaching fellowship at St Peter’s College, Oxford, a position he would hold until joining Corpus Christi just over a decade later.

His teaching took undergraduates beyond the books and the walls of Oxford with trips to explore churches and landscapes and bring the subject to life.

At Corpus Christi he took up a lectureship in Byzantine Studies, which had transformed into a major part of the curriculum and developed into a master’s course under his guidance.

In the 2016/17 he held the position of senior proctor of the university, which saw him look after disciplinary matters, complaints and oversee examinations.

At the end of November he was appointed head of Oriel College.

The move was welcomed and praised by the academic community in the city.

He died on December 23 in a multi-vehicle crash on the M40 near Banbury, in which a 29-year-old man was also killed.

He is survived by his wife Helen, a barrister and deputy high court judge, and their three children, George, Mary and Flossy.