STUART HALL 1932-2014

Stuart Hall, who has died at the age of 82, was one of the most important intellectuals of the British left – and of the black Caribbean diaspora – for nearly half a century. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he had a major role in the New Left that extricated radical socialism from the prison of the Moscow line; in the late 1960s and 1970s he went on to become a pioneer in the development of the sociology of media and popular culture; and in the 1980s and 1990s he played a crucial part in reorienting left thinking in an age of capitalist triumphalism. He wasn’t always right, but he will be sorely missed.