He received as PhD at the University of London in 1954, with a thesis on Coleridge's criticism of Shakespeare, later published in 1973 by Cambridge University Press as Coleridge: Critic of Shakespeare which was re-printed in 2010; according to WorldCat, the book is held in 554 libraries.
Upon his retirement he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Arabic Literature.
[6] He left an endowment at Oxford University for the payment of the "Mustafa Badawi Prize in Modern Arabic Literature" which is awarded for "the best English essay on some aspect of modern Arabic literature of up to 15,000 words."
which demonstrated, "sensitivity to modern Arabic literary texts as well as some originality and skill in critical analysis.
"[7] Upon his retirement, a festschrift in his honour was published as a special issue of Journal of Arabic literature [8]