When at the beginning of the 1980s what is now Glasgow Caledonian University decided to develop a media studies degree, we approached Stuart and asked him to join an internal scrutiny panel prior to a CNAA submission. This he willingly undertook and, subsequent to the degree’s approval, he became our chief examiner for a number of years. He was always measured and generous in his comments and we were very grateful for his contribution. And for the opportunity over lunch to talk about much more than mark ranges and dissertation topics. I am writing this on a train which is hugging the coast en route to Aberdeen and I remember asking him over one such lunch why latterly he had moved away from London to Brighton. ‘To be near the sea again,’ was the reply.

Stuart Hood was a remarkably accomplished individual who distinguished himself not only in his chosen field but also as a translator and a novelist. The first book of his I read was enthusiastically recommended to me by my then colleague, James Boyle, who himself later worked for the BBC. That book was not one of the novels, which came later, but ‘Pebbles from my Skull’ (later re-issued as ‘Carlino’), his account of his life behind enemy lines with the Italian partisans at the end of the Second World War. It is an exciting story in which the author comes close to death on several occasions. It is also an intermittent meditation on the differences between the Presbyterian milieu in which Stuart Hood grew up and the much warmer, much more overtly emotional, Italian one he found himself in at this time.

As Brian Winston points out, fighting alongside the partisans inevitably meant some involvement – however peripheral – in dealing with suspected spies and traitors, and the feelings of regret, even guilt, which followed. A colleague remarked to me on hearing of Stuart’s death that one always knew when talking to him that this was a man with a military background.

His politics were very much of the left, though personally I have some difficulty in believing, notwithstanding what Brian Winston says, that such a hard headed individual would have had much to do with an outfit quite as dotty as the Workers’ Revolutionary Party.

It was both a pleasure and a privilege to have known him.

I had brief dealings with Stuart in the course of the production of a film entitled FASCISM, that was made in 1980 under the auspices of the InterUniversity History Film Consortium. This was a collaboration between three Professors – Antony Polonsky (then at LSE*), Stuart Hood and the late James Joll (LSE). James read the voice-over, and Stuart looked after the structure of the film with Antony who delivered much of the writing – but it was a true collaboration throughout its construction.

When the film was in the research phase, I remember taking Stuart and Antony to the roof of 81 Dean Street (in the old BFI building where the BUFVC was at that time) with a pile of viewing prints to a former film storage vault where there was a 35 mm viewing table. I was fairly surprised, as a young whippersnapper, when the great Stuart Hood called down 20 minutes later to say he had never laced up a viewing table before and would I go back up to get him out of trouble…

The completed film was very well received by its target university audience and it probably deserved wider distribution. It drew on content sourced from British, Italian and German archives and I am pleased to say that it can be viewed online at http://bufvc.ac.uk/filmandsound?film_name=polonsky_f_hs6 (this delivery, for rights reasons, is offered under authenticated access only for bona fide staff and students in UK higher and further education). Along with the film there is a downloadable PDF of the accompanying booklet which, when it was first released, attracted considerable interest in its own right.

It is probably worth mentioning, as an historical factet, that the film FASCISM, along with Stanley Milgram’s OBEDIENCE, were used by Howard Davies, Alan Howard and the cast from the RSC as they planned the first production of C P Taylor’s play GOOD that was staged at the Donmar Warehouse to huge acclaim in 1981 (and later went to New York in 1982).

*Professor Antony Polonsky is at Brandeis University (http://tinyurl.com/yyegvxw)