Stadlen was working as a busboy in New York's Times Square on 4 April 1968, when the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. happened in Memphis, and travelled to the south to witness the extraordinary events following his death.
[6] From 2006 to 2007 he conducted a series of interviews with well-known figures (Gerry Adams, Desmond Tutu, F. W. de Klerk, Simon Peres, Hanan Ashrawi, Tony Benn and David Blunkett) which were podcast by The Guardian.
[1] From his retirement in 2013, Stadlen researched the history of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and was writing a book on the Rivonia Trial, which led to Nelson Mandela's imprisonment.
[9][5] In 2015–2016 he was awarded the Alistair Horne Visiting Fellow Fellowship, an "annual fellowship designed to encourage the completion of works in modern history and biography which combine academic scholarship and a wider public appeal", at St Antony's College, Oxford, to work on his book Bram Fischer QC and the Unsung Heroes of the Struggle Against Apartheid 1960–1966 (as of April 2019[update] unpublished).
[11] In 2017, Stadlen directed a documentary film entitled Life is Wonderful, featuring the then remaining survivors of the Rivonia trial, Denis Goldberg, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada,[12] along with lawyers Joel Joffe, George Bizos and Denis Kuny, which tells the story of the Rivonia trial.