Stuart Hall and I used to argue about jazz. He was a Miles Davis fan, and I was into the Modern Jazz Quartet. The third member of our late 1950s Universities and Left Review troika, Raphael Samuel, was more or less tone deaf except for folk. In the New Left’s early days Stuart and Raphael made a fabulous team: Stuart unfailingly courteous, cool, unflappable and – quite rare this on the left – with a terrific sense of humour.