Hugh Stoddart

Hugh Stoddart has had a long career as a screenwriter. His first feature-length original screenplay Remembrance was shortlisted for an Evening Standard award and won grand prize at the Taormina Film Festival. This was followed by his adaptation of To the Lighthouse for the BBC. Other films from the 1980s include We Think the World of You starring Alan Bates and Gary Oldman. His play Gibraltar Strait about the shooting of three members of the IRA in 1990 was followed soon after by his six-part drama serial The Big Battalions for Channel 4. Concerned with religious faith and conflict, and set partly in the Middle East, it was a prescient piece in view of 9/11 and all that followed. His adaptation of The Mill on the Floss, starring Emily Watson, was screened by BBC1 in 1997. More recently he has written and directed two short films, and his new feature film, Waiting for You, co-written with director Charles Garrad, is awaiting release.

Hugh worked in the visual arts in the 1970s, finally as director of the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and his involvement continued as an art critic and writer of catalogue essays.

He remains committed to writing in all its forms, and was for six years a director of the Authors Licensing & Copyright Society. He has worked as a writer in prisons, and was editor of Not Shut Up, a magazine to showcase the art and writing of prisoners, that circulated throughout the British penal system (2003-2013.)