ARTHUR Frederick Thompson — known as Pat — was one of a generation of young Fellows who, under the leadership of the Warden Maurice Bowra, transformed the reputation of Wadham College.

Previously considered respectable if dull, Wadham acquired a reputation for dynamic radicalism, which it has retained to this day.

Pat Thompson played a leading part in this transformation of the college, as senior tutor, as well as in his own fields of history and philosophy, politics and economics.

He was also influential in the University’s history faculty, notably in building up the serious study of 20th century British political and social history.

Born in Preston in 1920, when the family moved to London, Pat attended Dulwich College, winning an exhibition, a form of scholarship, to Magdalen College.

He was influenced by two very different tutors, the medievalist Bruce McFarlane and AJP Taylor.

He took a first in history and then a commission in the Worcestershire Yeomanry. He married Mary in 1941, a Somerville graduate and botanist, who died in 2003.

He parachuted into Normandy shortly after D-Day, was wounded, and spent the rest of the war in secret activities at Bletchley Park before arriving at Wadham.

Like AJP Taylor, he prided himself on delivering lectures without notes.

His approach to politicians and do-gooders generally was invariably sceptical, even cynical, and he acquired a reputation as an “operator”, not least in placing his pupils in academic posts.

His air of even-tempered, pipe-smoking geniality concealed a volatile temperament.

Dinner parties at the couple’s house in Kiln Lane were legendary, not least for the gossip which flowed freely.

The Thompsons also coped with a brain-damaged son, John, and the death of elder son Alan, a journalist.

Pat himself wrote comparatively little, although always of the highest quality. He would not be well regarded in modern academia, with its accent on “productivity”.

But his influence on the writing of history was enormous, through both his undergraduate and graduate pupils. So, too, was his influence on the wider world, not least the media, through his pupils — Melvyn Bragg and Julian Mitchell to name just two.

He died after a series of brief illnesses, aged 89, on October 9.