Eric died as he lived – with simplicity, style and without fuss – in London, just off the train from Paris, and a brilliant working holiday in France.

After a shared pastrami sandwich, half a pint of beer and while reading the paper in one of our favourite Bloomsbury haunts, Freddies Bar of William Goodenough College, Eric's great light went out in just a minute. I lost the love of my life and the world lost a remarkable man.

I met Eric almost exactly 40 years ago in Sydney when I was giving my first conference paper on women and crime, and Eric was one of a small number of new men attending this mainly female gathering.

Eric's inimitable chat-up line, from the audience, was ‘Do you have any empirical evidence for your argument?’ Already a theorist, the truth was I had very little.

By the next day, I had fallen in love with this fascinating man who offered such a big and wonderful world of thought and feeling and sheer fun, but who saw the need for solid footnotes.

Eric had an agile mind and body, and a big heart. He had an endless humane curiosity. He was interested in everyone and the fine details of their lives – what made them tick; where they had come from; what moved them to leave home; and why they were now talking to Eric, say in a taxi or a restaurant or anywhere at all.

And this intense interest in people was reflected in his prodigious and elegant scholarship that helped to explain the lives, motivations and movements of so many finely drawn individuals and then of the millions, and even billions, as they roamed across the planet.

Eric's last very fine paper, in Amiens, northern France, was on small and big history, a typically large subject. He believed in work of great scale, but never lost sight of the human being. In his little cabin at the bottom of our garden, Eric was explaining the world.

In the many long and eloquent tributes that came tumbling in, Eric was described over and again as a gentleman, a distinguished scholar, as humble, as a dedicated sportsman and as simply a lovely man, an encourager of others.