After national service in the RAF, he read French at King's College London and subsequently lived in Paris for three years, writing a thesis on 'The Vogue of the American Novel in France since 1944', including a year as a lecteur at the Sorbonne.
In 1965 he was appointed Professor of French Literature at the University of Leeds where he remained until his retirement in 1993.
He translated and edited work by Albert Camus and Lucien Goldmann, and wrote book-length studies of writers including Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, Aldous Huxley and Roland Barthes.
Thody launched a "total immersion language course" in French for the Civil Service College in 1972.
In 1982, he wrote the Thody Report, on improving Diplomatic Service language training.