He wrote extensively about nineteenth-century English literature and also published books about the history of religious thought.
Born in 1927, Cockshut attended Winchester College, where he played cricket.
[1][2] He then studied at the University of Oxford, where he was awarded an MA and where he was A. C. Bradley Fellow at Balliol College from 1950 to 1954.
They married in 1952 at the Church of SS Gregory and Augustine in North Oxford.
[6][4] Following his retirement as G. M. Young Lecturer, he remained an emeritus fellow of Hertford College.