Quentin Hughes died at the age of 84 on 8 May 2004. A man of many parts, Quentin was an architect, university teacher, architectural and planning consultant, a leading conservationist for Malta and, particularly, in his native Liverpool. He published a seminal architectural study of that city, Seaport, in 1964 and more recently Liverpool City of Architecture (1999). In addition, he had a distinguished wartime career as a member of the Special Air Services behind German lines in occupied Italy, for which he was awarded the Military Cross and Bar and received lasting injuries. The obituaries in the main national newspapers covered these aspects of his life with due thoroughness but largely omitted another aspect, which was as a pioneer in the study of the history of fortifications and a founder member of the Fortress Study Group. We, in the FSG knew and appreciated this side of his work and life which, to many outsiders may have seemed peripheral, but was to Quentin, as well as ourselves, a vital and lifelong passion.

This interest undoubtedly sprang from his initial wartime career as a gunner stationed in Malta where he could not help seeing the complex sequence of defences in and around Valletta. These he saw as part of the whole story of Maltese architecture which he was to describe in Fortress Architecture & Military History in Malta (1969), and saw him produce Malta, A Guide to the Fortifications (1985) under his own imprint, Penpaled Books. The wartime experience certainly stimulated continuing association with Malta where he was to set up the Royal School of Architecture as its professor (1968-72). His services to Malta saw him created an Officer of the Maltese Order of Merit shortly before his death It was not therefore surprising in the climate he had helped to establish that on his return to England Quentin was one of a small group of fortification enthusiasts who met in Oxford in 1974 and decided to create the Fortress Study Group. From the outset he was determined that the Group should have its own publication, eventually to be known as FORT. This he edited from 1975, first on pages resembling thin cardboard until, when he retired as editor in 1990, it had metamorphosed into a handsome annual journal which held its own among other scholarly publications.

Quentin was an internationalist. This set the tone for the world-wide membership of FSG as well as the nature of the contents and contributors to FORT. He privately regretted that FSG did not encompass the whole range of military architecture including the periods before the advent of gunpowder artillery. He was particularly excited by the innovations which affected fortification during the Italian Renaissance. In this respect he combined with scholars such as John Hale and Simon Pepper who together brought Renaissance military engineering into academic respectability and acclaim. The important article : ‘Fortification in late 15th-century Italy: the treatise of Francesco di Giorgio’ in Papers in Italian Archaeology I, the Lancaster Seminar Recent research in prehistoric, classical and medieval archaeology in BAR Supplementary Series 41(ii) (1978) was an important contribution.

In the development of FSG he was an outstanding figure. Urbane and generous with his time and expertise he was stimulating company during the Group’s excursions at home and abroad, always ready to explain and discuss points of detail. In this he matched fellow soldiers and colleagues like Jock Hamilton Baillie and General Nicholas. Quentin was able to see the subject both from the standpoint of someone who had experienced warfare and with an architect’s mind for understanding structures.

His considerable efforts for the Group were focused on establishing FORT as a journal of reference and academic excellence. It was a publication to which he made numerous and varied contributions whose range matched that of his own publications. A notable essay is ‘Military Architecture and the printed book’ 10 (1982) in which he argued that the early printed illustrations proved of enormous significance for imparting technical information. The experience from his years in Malta and familiarity with the fortifications of the Knights was distilled in FORT 4 (1977), but where Quentin excelled was in taking this study a step further by identifying the extension of the defences by nineteenth century British engineers. He was especially interested in the 1860 Royal Commission fortifications in Britain and their evolution: Wellington & Fortification, 15 (1987); General Todleben’s views on the Royal Commission forts under construction in 1864, 7 (1979). The French dimension included Project for the defence of Paris, 12 (1984), and an essay on the French naval base of Cherbourg, 8, supplement (1980). Further afield were Defences of Corfu, 14 (1986) and Kronstadt and the Crimean War, 21 (1993). More generally, and serving as articles of reference for the membership were, A Chronology of Events in Fortification from 1800 to 1914 and An Illustrated English glossary of terms used in military architecture (1980). This is by no means a complete bibliography.

His own publications spread beyond Malta, to the impact of British military engineers around the Mediterranean: Britain in the Mediterranean & the Defence of her Naval Stations (1981). From this sprang Strong as the Rock of Gibraltar (1995) written in collaboration with Athanassios Migos. He had earlier combined with Simon Pepper in a new introduction (1983) to E Viollet-Le-Duc’s Annals of a Fortress.

Quentin's greatest legacy is his Military Architecture, The Art of Defence from Earliest Times to the Atlantic Wall (1974) with a revised and extended edition (1991), which puts the study into its broad historical and geographical context including fortifications of the Ancient World. He saw the subject in the round to include medieval castles as well as recent works of reinforced concrete.

Quentin wore his scholarship lightly. He was a greatly respected figure in many fields. We in FSG have much reason to be grateful to him for his companionship and for establishing the academic rock on which Group has come to be based.

Andrew Saunders.

With the death of Major Tom Hitchins in April 2004 the FSG has lost one of its longest-serving members, and a link with the days when coast artillery was regarded as essential to national defence.

His was a Devon family; his grandfather’s firm (which he joined) were agricultural merchants and contractors to HM Dockyard (Plymouth) for the provision of horses (some 250). A member of the OTC at West Buckland School (of which he was a governor for 20 years), he joined the TA and, in 1932, was posted as an ‘ensign’ to a coast defence unit (being too young to be commissioned). Called up in 1939, he mobilised his unit to defend Fort Bovisand, and was then sent to Drake’s Island as fire commander for Plymouth Sound. Thence, via Scotland, he took part in the ill-fated Norwegian expedition in 1940. The ship carrying the battery’s heavy guns was sunk en route, and after fighting as a partially-armed infantryman, Tom, with shrapnel wounds in one leg, was fortunate to be evacuated back to Scotland.

He was eventually posted to Combined Operations at Newhaven Fort, tracking the Dieppe raid, and thence to command and train three Home Guard batteries on the Sussex coast, finishing the war as Major and second-in-command at Dover Castle. A souvenir of this period of service was a carronade, originally mounted in his garden, which he gave to Crownhill Fort. Tom remained in the TA until 1952, and saw his battery re-established and running well, but the family business now required his full-time commitment.

An early interest was military history, especially guns and fortifications (there was a professor of architecture in the family). He became a regular participant in FSG meetings in the UK and the overseas tours. Castle-hunting, with his long-suffering wife Peggy, took him to every corner of the country.

His profound knowledge of the forts of the Plymouth area, and his friendship with MoD officials and serving officers, was of great service to the FSG. He was chairman of the organising committee of the highly successful FSG conference held in Plymouth in 1990, which was graced by the attendance of the Group’s President, the Duke of Gloucester. Tom’s local connections helped the committee to attract to the conference local political leaders, archaeologists, museum curators and town planners, which, added to the Duke's whole-hearted participation, made the conference a great public relations success (see also Casemate 30). The firing of the Hitchins carronade at Crownhill Fort, to welcome the ducal cavalcade, was much enjoyed by watching FSG members, the powder charge and wads being rather larger than the occasion required.

After the conference, the committee decided to stay together as FSGSW, with Tom as chairman and Freddie Woodward as secretary, to give support to the Plymouth Defence Survey set up in 1991. This, in 1996, led to the publication of a major work of research, viz Freddie Woodward and Andrew Pye's The Historic Defences of Plymouth, which was reviewed in Casemate 48. During the years 1990-2000, FSGSW grew slowly in size to about 25 members and, guided by Tom and Freddie, made many visits to defence sites in and near Plymouth, including those not normally open to members of the public. The FSG conference held at Plymouth in 2000 can now be seen as the swan song of the old guard. Notably successful (see Casemate 60, page 12) under Andrew Pye’s leadership, Tom gave full support but was tired and wished to stand down and Freddie was terminally ill (obituary, Casemate 60, page 16). Tom was pleased when, in 2002, his son Bill, a district councillor with first-hand knowledge of planning, took over the chairmanship and direction of FSGSW.

No appreciation of Tom's connection with the FSG could be complete without acknowledgement of the generous hospitality extended to local members and others, including overseas members, at his house near Crownhill Fort. The development of the Fort, owned and operated by the Landmark Trust, was a particular interest of his and, through his connection with the Trust, the Fort became a principal meeting-place for FSGSW.

R A Erskine.

The death of Rex Whitworth on 22 May 2004, aged 87, leaves the FSG minus one general. Some of you will recall Rex at our Fort George meeting [1996], where he joined the breakfast queue with all the ‘other ranks’ only to have to wait like us all for the two duty Sergeants to frog-march the one prisoner in to the top of the queue where all 3 had the pick of the best eggs, bread and tea. Later I traveled to Culloden battlefield with him, where he tried (unsuccessfully) to sell his 1992 book on ‘William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland’ to the surprised kilted official in the bookstand. We traveled on to Edinburgh together in the train and managed to move ourselves and luggage to the front end, or we would have been sent to Glasgow.

Rex was a Grenadier from 1940 and served in North Africa and Italy. He served as an intelligence officer on Montgomery’s staff, ending the war as a temporary major. He then served at SHAPE in Versailles and was in Berlin in 1963 when President Kennedy visited the Brandenburg gate. From 1966-68, he was promoted to Major-General and given the GOC Yorkshire and Northumbria District command. Later in civvy street he was bursar of Exeter College, Oxford and took up writing military history. His first book was ‘Field Marshal Earl Ligonier’ CinC of British Forces in the Seven Years war. He wrote some of his books in the library at Sandhurst, no doubt mindfu1 of the fact that the library was now ‘de-militarised’, and he no doubt knew more about the contents than the young ladies in the library today. We exchanged sources from time to time and his knowledge of the eighteenth century British army was second to none.

The FSG will miss him. I shall miss a modest, amusing and delightful friend.

John Kinross.