Painter in oil, acrylic and watercolour, stage designer, poet and teacher, born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire as Hilary Edward Larry Wakefield. He studied at Cheltenham College of Art, 1941–4, teachers including Hugh Casson; Göttingen University in Germany, 1947–8; architecture at RWA, Bristol, 1954–6; and at Manchester University for his master’s degree, 1974. Teaching appointments included Southampton College of Art, 1956, and Southampton University, 1968–70. Among Wakefield’s other engagements were: environmental Colour on the Tyne scheme, for Tyne and Wear Authority, 1964; collaboration with composer Jonathan Harvey on colour projections for his opera Full Moon in March, 1967; stage sets for Michael Lawrence’s production of The Flies by Sartre, 1970; collaboration with the composer Ric Graebner on the opera Fragmented City, 1989; and on Graebner’s opera based on Racine’s Bérénice, 1992.