John Riley-Smith was born on 27 June 1938 in Harrogate, England. An historian, a colleague described him as ‘quite simply the leading historian of the crusades anywhere in the world’. Lecturer at St Andrews from 1964 to 1972, he moved to Cambridge as Lecturer and Fellow at Queen’s College the following year. Appointed Professor of History at the University of London in 1978, he was elected Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge and Fellow of Emmanuel College in 1994, retiring in 2004.
Appointed Knight of Grace and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, he was also made Bailiff Grand Cross of the Hospital of Saint John. After President Bush proclaimed a ‘crusade’ against the perpetrators of September 11, Riley-Smith was flown to Washington to advise on his word choice. Notable works include The Knights of St John in Jerusalem and Cyprus, c.1050–1310 (1967), The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277 (1973), What Were the Crusades? (1977), The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (1986), and The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (2008).
