[1] Together with his wife, Linda Murray, he wrote primers on Italian Renaissance art which have been used by generations of students.
In 1959 they published the highly successful Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists, which was frequently updated and reissued.
Linda also wrote several books on her own, and completed their collaboration The Oxford Companion To Christian Art And Architecture (1996) after Peter died.
He went to King Edward VI School, Birmingham and Robert Gordon's College, Aberdeen.
In 1952, he became the librarian of the Witt Library at the Courtauld Institute (leaving this position in 1964) and in 1961 he was made senior research fellow at the college.
Murray moved to Birkbeck College, London in 1967 as Professor of Art History, succeeding Nikolaus Pevsner.
Murray retired as professor emeritus in 1980 and was succeeded by John Steer.
He was a gifted linguist, especially in German and Italian, and translated seminal art history texts into English, including Klassische Kunst, by Heinrich Wölfflin in 1952 and Die Geschichte der Renaissance by Jacob Burckhardt in 1985.
[4] Photographs by Peter Murray are held in the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art and are currently being digitised.
The High Renaissance and Mannerism, 'The World of Art Library' series.