Beddow studied at St John's College, Cambridge, earning a Double First in the Modern and Medieval Languages Tripos in 1969.
After taking a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) he became a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
Beddow held lecturing posts at Cambridge and King's College London before being appointed Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Leeds in 1986.
He was an international authority on Goethe, Thomas Mann, Christa Wolf and the impact of modernity on German literature.
[2][3][4] Until his death in September 2019, Beddow was for two decades the architect and maintainer of the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, the primary online scholarly reference resource for Buddhist Studies.