JACK Pole, who held the Rhodes chair of American history at Oxford University for 10 years, has died aged 87.

He was one of the most respected British experts on American history, and one of the first British historians of America whose work was taken seriously by US historians.

For 10 years until 1989 he held the Rhodes chair, and a fellowship at St Catherine’s College.

He was thought to be one of the ringleaders in the successful move to deny an honorary degree to Margaret Thatcher, because he considered the Prime Minister had damaged British higher education.

Mr Pole was a careful researcher and a prolific author.

His 1966 book Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic established his reputation and, in 1983, he published The Pursuit of Equality in American History, which many scholars thought was his best work.

Mr Pole was born in London and attended King Alfred’s School in Hampstead, where he began a love affair with cricket.

His service in the Second World War was as an anti-aircraft officer, first at Scarpa Flow in Orkney, then in the campaign against the Italians in the Horn of Africa.

After the war, Mr Pole went to Oxford University to read history, and then went on a scholarship to Princeton, USA, and met three British students who became lifelong friends.

They were music critic David Cairns, Anne Robbins, and historian Gerald Aylmer.

At Princeton, Mr Pole came under the influence of the American historian Richard Hofstadter and, at the university, he met and married Marilyn Mitchell, with whom he had a son Nicholas, and two daughters, Ilsa and Lucy. The marriage was dissolved in 1988.

In 1953, Mr Pole returned to a lectureship at University College London, where he taught until he was called to Cambridge University to be a reader in American history and government and a fellow of Churchill College, of which he became vice-master from 1975 to 1978.

In 1979 he moved to Oxford.

In the early 1970s, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but continued to work for many years in spite of the symptoms, and continued one of his favourite pasttimes, painting.

Almost a decade after his diagnosis, Mr Pole produced a definitive edition of The Federalist Papers, in which James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay laid out the fundamental ideas of the American revolution.

Mr Pole died on January 31, and is survived by his three children and five grandchildren.