But when he was a teenager, they came to a deal. His father had always hoped, and no doubt expected, that Erich would become a rabbi. He attended a Jewish religious school, or yeshiva. He was the grandson of an august rabbinical figure from Vilnius, a city so steeped in religious tradition and disputation that it was known as the 'Jerusalem' of Lithuania. But all dealt with other themes, too: class and family, academic infighting and, inevitably, religion.neĮrich was not only the son of a prominent New York rabbi. All were as deftly woven around love stories as the first.

He went on to write more than half a dozen other novels. He not only became a regular on TV chatshows but, as an accomplished marathon runner and all-round sports fan, was enlisted by the ABC network to join its commentary team for a string of Olympic Games. Its most famous line, 'love means never having to say you're sorry', instantly entered popular culture. By the end of the following year, his bestselling book and box-office-topping film about love and bereavement had made him a celebrity. He wrote Love Story over his Christmas break in 1969. But Erich insisted: 'Trust me, they'll laugh.' And they did. Alongside his teaching, he had notched up several Hollywood screenwriting credits, including on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine (1968) – where the imprint of the rabbi's son was particularly evident in his mischievously inserted line: 'Funny, you don't look blue-ish'. At Harvard, he co-authored the annual Hasty Pudding theatrical production. In his academic career, Erich taught Latin and Greek literature not only at Yale, but at Harvard and Princeton and, upon moving to London with his British wife in the 1980s, at Wolfson College, Oxford.īut he had always wanted to write.

He left Harvard as class poet and 'Latin salutary orator', a twin honour equalled only by one other student, TS Eliot. He was a classics professor at Yale University, having earned his master's and PhD from Harvard four years earlier. When Erich wrote the book that changed his life, he was 32. But while it made him rich, the skewed fame that it brought him shouldered aside a litany of other accomplishments: as classics scholar and teacher, literary critic and sports commentator, essayist and scriptwriter, historian and practitioner of comedy.

The success he earned from his first novel and its Hollywood film adaptation would be accolade enough for most authors. The American writer Erich Segal, who has died of a heart attack aged 72, will be best, and most misleadingly, remembered as the author of Love Story (1970).

Erich segal books