He came to international prominence in 1975 while he was living in Uganda and was sentenced to death for espionage and sedition following comments about President Idi Amin in a book which Hills wrote.
After Amin rebuffed appeals for clemency by Queen Elizabeth, Hills was released and allowed to return to the UK following the intervention of the British government.
Returning to England, Hills worked briefly at Shell-Mex & BP before moving to Poland in 1937 as English editor of a cultural magazine.
These papers contain much valuable correspondence that Hills had with Nikolai Tolstoy, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lord Bethell and many others together with Public Record Office documents help to show what really happened.
Hills took a similarly humane and independent line over the question of the SS Fede, a decrepit hulk which was anchored off La Spezia and crammed with 1,200 Polish Jews, survivors of the Holocaust who were determined to make their way to Palestine in the face of a British blockade and quota restrictions on Jewish immigration.
Tried before a military tribunal chaired by Juma Butabika, he was condemned to death by firing squad for referring to the dictator as a 'black Nero' and a 'village tyrant'.
[5] The incident was alluded to by Welsh comedian Max Boyce in his tribute song to the Rugby legends known as the Pontypool Front Row, "We've had trouble in Uganda, with President Amin/We had to send an envoy with a message from the Queen/To stay the execution, but Amin answered "No"/Until a card was sent from the Viet Gwent – the Pontypool Front Row".