Source: Miguel Mateo-Garcia/REX

Laurie Taylor, sociologist, broadcaster and Times ÖйúAƬ columnist, said of Professor Hall, who died who died on 10 February at the age of 82: ¡°We now talk very glibly about neoliberalism and the marketisation of just about everything.

¡°His writings on Thatcherism were extraordinarily prophetic - though he took no pleasure in being proved right and continued to try and find sites of political resistance.

¡°He was very interested in what ¡®Britishness¡¯ might mean and looked optimistically towards the creation of new forms of identity.¡±

Mr Taylor described the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Culture, where Professor Hall served as director from 1968 to 1979, as ¡°a wonderful experiment in teaching and learning¡±.

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He praised his ¡°exemplary sympathy and concern for communities which were the object of scorn and prejudice within society¡±, his ¡°appetite for modern cultural forms¡± and his ¡°intellectual mobility¡±.

He added: ¡°Stuart used to say that all the different phases of his life coincided with changing musical styles of his idol Miles Davies.¡±

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Equally attractive, in Mr Taylor¡¯s view, was ¡°his delicious sense of humour - people always wanted to hear the wonderful sound of his laughter¡­ Anyone involved in politics, particularly on the left, always generates feuds and ideological battles.

¡°It is a testimony to Hall¡¯s generosity of spirit that he never fell out with anyone, that no one ever had a bad word to say about him.¡±

For Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of The Open University, where Professor Hall served as professor of sociology from 1979 until his retirement in 1997, ¡°Stuart was one of the intellectual founders of cultural studies, publishing many influential books and shaping the conversations of the time.

¡°It was a privilege to have him at the heart of The Open University - touching and influencing so many lives through his courses and tutoring.

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¡°He was a committed and influential public intellectual of the New Left, who embodied the spirit of what the OU has always stood for: openness, accessibility, a champion for social justice and of the power of education to bring positive change in peoples¡¯ lives.¡±

Lynne Segal, anniversary professor of psychology and gender studies at Birkbeck, University of London, described Professor Hall as ¡°a beautiful person to know, inspiring and encouraging, like the high priest of those of us who wanted to bring together a left vision.

¡°He was extraordinarily supportive of all our work, an amazing catalyst at bringing out the very best that could be brought out of us politically and intellectually.

¡°His eightieth birthday in 2012 was an inspirational occasion and his engagement with the world continued until his last breath - he kept on having things to say about what was going wrong with the coalition government and what the alternatives might have been.

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¡°With his death we have lost the last of the central figures of the New Left, so it marks the end of something we desperately need to hang on to.¡±

matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com