My husband, Peter Skrine, who has died aged 81, was a distinguished scholar and academic. Professor of German at the University of Bristol from 1989 to 2000, he was a gifted and entertaining lecturer who loved to share his knowledge and communicate his enthusiasms, with a winning combination of erudition and sometimes impish humour.

Peter lectured on German literature from the 16th to the 20th centuries at universities and academic conferences, but was equally at home giving informal talks to non-specialist groups of adults in Bristol and Bath, and to branches of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft (Anglo-German Society) in German cities.

A popular talk was on the often hilarious experiences of 19th-century English-speaking travellers in Germany. These he gleaned from literature, such as Mark Twain’s observation that “in German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has”, and from rare books at the London Library.

Born in London, the son of Walter Skrine, known as Frank, formerly of the Sarawak civil service, and Charlotte (nee Römer), daughter of the French pastor in Bern, Peter was educated at the Ecole Internationale in Geneva and then at King William’s college on the Isle of Man, his father being Manx by birth.

After military service in the Royal Navy, spent learning Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists, he read modern languages at Cambridge before completing a doctorate in comparative literature at Strasbourg University, writing his dissertation in French on the subject of Latin and Dutch influences on the 17th-century German tragedian Daniel Casper von Lohenstein. In 1962 Peter became a lecturer in German at Manchester University, where he remained until the call to Bristol.

He was the author or co-author of four books including The Baroque: Literature and Culture in Seventeenth-century Europe (1978) and A Companion to German Literature (1997, with Eda Sagarra). He also wrote many learned articles and more than 180 fair-minded reviews of books by other scholars.

We met in Cambridge, married in 1963, and settled in Didsbury, south Manchester, where the birth of our three daughters brought out his childlike sense of fun and adventure.

Classical music, travel to other European countries or to his beloved Isle of Man, good company, small children and animals all appealed to Peter’s sunny temperament.

He is survived by our daughters, Sophie, Juliet and Dinah, three granddaughters, Suzie, Elizabeth and Leonie, and five grandsons, Oliver, Louis, Oscar, Bertie and Rupert.