recollections
Section 6. Culture
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Richard founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham. It was a very lively and open organization at that time, and numerous young academics from a variety of disciplines used to take part in its seminars. Richard was known for the fact that his most adverse comment on a talk was to say: ‘Interesting!’

One of its leading lights at that time was Stuart Hall, with whom I became friendly. He had been a student at Oxford University, his tutor at one point being J.I.M. Stewart, better known by the pen-name ‘Michael Innes’ under which he wrote a lot of detective stories. But I formed the impression that Stuart didn’t have a very favourable memory of this former tutor. Stuart is a warm and radical person, with a very sharp mind and an engaging sense of humour. For a 2006 interview with him about cosmopolitanism, click here.

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