He would be allowed to attend the excellent local state school, as long as he agreed to spend evenings studying the Bible at the city’s Jewish Theological Seminary. 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.Įrich 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.

Love Story over his Christmas break in 1969. But Erich insisted: “Trust me, they’ll laugh.” And they did. 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”. Alongside his teaching, he had notched up several Hollywood screenwriting credits, including on the Beatles’ 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, T.S. He was a classics professor at Yale University, having earned his master’s and Ph.D. 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 died of a heart attack aged 72 on Sunday at his London home, will be best, and most misleadingly, remembered as the author of

Erich segal novels