Nicholas always respected flare and imagination in a student as long as it went along with solid argument

An element of the army officer he had once been remained with Nicholas Lash as the Norris-Hulse Professor at Cambridge, writes Janet Soskice.

His bearing upright, his step brisk, his manners always impeccable, I have strong visual memories of Nicholas bent over a filing cabinet in his office, rifling through its contents at speed to find just the right, perfectly stored document needed to resolve a faculty dilemma. He was proud to have been a son of the last days of the Raj, born in India at the foothills of the Himalayas, and a vision of that beauty stayed with him through later writings on the study of the religions of India.