[3] Stoddart attended secondary school in Worthing, West Sussex and went on to Keble College, Oxford University, graduating with a degree in law in 1969.
Stoddart gave first exhibitions in the UK to Bernard Bazile, Chris Burden, Agnes Denes, Jochen Gerz, Noel Harding, Pieter Laurens Mol and Dennis Oppenheim.
Stoddart's programme included UK artists at the start of their careers such as Paul Graham, Mali Morris and Hugh O’Donnell.
There was an exhibition at the Ikon Gallery to revisit the shows put on by Stoddart and his successor, Antonia Payne As Exciting As We Can Make It.
[7] Stoddart left the Ikon Gallery at the end of his three year contract, and moved to London where he worked as a freelance art critic in the early 1990s.
Having written short stories previously he began to write drama while at university and sent his first scripts to the Royal Court Theatre, who invited him to join their Writers Group.
Co-written with the director Colin Gregg, Begging the Ring concerned a young man who faces conscription into the army during the First World War.
It was then bought by the BBC but only screened in 1983; it led however to interest in other projects: Melvyn Bragg wanted to commission a film to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of D.H.Lawrence’s death and for this Stoddart adapted his early novel The Trespasser, with Alan Bates starring opposite Pauline Moran.
Stoddart’s next film Hard Travelling (BBC 1986) was from an original screenplay drawing on his ten years of involvement with contemporary art.