Stuart Legg

Who was Stuart Legg?

Stuart Legg was a documentary film-maker.

As part of the British Documentary Film Movement, he worked with the General Post Office film unit from 1933, before replacing Paul Rotha as head of Strand Films in 1937. In 1939, he moved to Canada with John Grierson, where he launched the National Film Board of Canada's Canada Carries On and World in Action film series, for which he made many films. His most notable films include Churchill's Island, which won the first Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject, and Warclouds in the Pacific, which was nominated for the same award. A few years after the war, he returned to Britain and worked as a producer for the Crown Film Unit between 1948 and 1950. In 1957, he became chairman of the Film Centre International. He later produced documentaries for Shell.

His interest in history led him to write The Heartland; dedicated to Grierson, the book "gives the grand sweep of European and Asian history in terms of the continual conflict between the great coastal civilizations and the barbarian horsemen from the central Asian steppes."