15 Facts About Richard Hoggart

Herbert Richard Hoggart was an English academic whose career covered the fields of sociology, English literature and cultural studies, with emphasis on British popular culture.

Richard Hoggart's father, Tom Longfellow Hoggart, the son of a boilermaker, was a regular infantry soldier and housepainter who died of brucellosis when Hoggart was a year old, and his mother Adeline died of a chest illness when he was eight.

Richard Hoggart grew up with his grandmother in Hunslet, and was encouraged in his education by an aunt.

Richard Hoggart then won a scholarship to study English at the University of Leeds, where he graduated with a first class degree.

Richard Hoggart served with the Royal Artillery during World War II and was discharged as a staff captain.

Richard Hoggart was a staff tutor at the University of Hull from 1946 to 1959, and published his first book, a study of W H Auden's poetry, in 1951.

Richard Hoggart became Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Leicester from 1959 to 1962.

Richard Hoggart was an expert witness at the Lady Chatterley trial in 1960, and his argument that it was an essentially moral and "puritan" work, which merely repeated words he had heard on a building site on his way to the court, is sometimes viewed as having had a decisive influence on the outcome of the trial.

Richard Hoggart was Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and finally Warden of Goldsmiths, University of London, after which he retired from formal academic life.

The Main Building at Goldsmiths has now been renamed the "Richard Hoggart Building" in tribute to his contributions to the college.

Richard Hoggart was a member of numerous public bodies and committees, including the Albemarle Committee on Youth Services, the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Statesman and Nation Publishing Company Ltd.

Richard Hoggart was Chairman of the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education, and the Broadcasting Research Unit, as well as a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Richard Hoggart attacked contemporary education for its emphasis on the vocational, and cultural relativism for its tendency to concentrate on the popular and meretricious.

One of his two sons was the political journalist Simon Richard Hoggart, who predeceased him by three months, and the other is the television critic Paul Richard Hoggart.

Richard Hoggart died at a nursing home in London on 10 April 2014, aged 95.