Hugo Pooley: 1954 – 2025

The intimate gathering in the late afternoon of Monday, May 26th 2025, close to the sparkling cornflower-blue Mediterranean of the Catalan coast, was to say goodbye to the remarkable and much-loved Trinity Hall character that was Hugo Pooley.

Following Spanish custom, his funeral in Llançà took place little more than two days after he died in his sleep in hospital, in the early hours of Saturday, May 24th. Last year Hugo was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Regular chemo and an experimental new drug therapy gave him quality of life over his final twelve months, but in the end his weakened immune system was simply and suddenly overwhelmed by infection.

In a long and distinguished career as a simultaneous interpreter, Hugo became a notable and widely respected figure in the European Parliament language booths of Brussels and Strasbourg as well as many countries round the world, with South America another frequent and favoured destination. Spanish, Catalan, French and Portuguese were his working languages.

Hugo trained for this exacting vocation in the fiercely competitive environment of the world-renowned École Supérieure d’Interprètes et Traducteurs (ESIT), part of the Sorbonne in Paris. His dedication, from then on, to the strict and impartial ethos of his profession was exemplary. Relaying complex and often politically sensitive speeches as they come into your ear, from one language into another, is not for the faint-hearted. Mere translation would be far too slow. In a memorable phrase I remember Hugo using, one must go “beyond the word”.

Born Hugh William Pooley in Luton on 14th July 1954, and raised in Norwich, the youngest of three brothers and with three younger sisters, Hugo came up to Trinity Hall in the autumn of 1972. He followed in the footsteps of both his father and older brother Martin. In the Freshmen’s photograph of that term, he sits almost directly behind me. A few weeks later I took the simple expedient of knocking at his door on D6 because he seemed an interesting sort of chap: the beginning of a 53-year friendship.

Our Hall years were deeply intertwined, in more ways than one. We shared what might be called an unconventional, “hippy” lifestyle, forging deep bonds in the lingua franca of the times, rock music – groups and artists like Lou Reed, John Cale and the Velvet Underground accompanying our interesting and often psychedelic journeys. This was not without cost, academically, psychologically, emotionally, but we emerged with our friendship strengthened by all our ups and downs. The music stayed with us, too.

Hugo found his metier after switching from Law to Languages in his first year at the Hall. On a trip through Spain, he cemented his lifelong love of that country and its language, changing his birth name Hugh to Hugo. He quickly developed a remarkable, almost intuitive interest in the vernacular of the “spoken tongue”, enabling him, for instance, to become an acknowledged collaborator in Professor Colin Smith’s definitive Collins Spanish-English/English-Spanish dictionary.

It was on one of these trips to Spain that he met his first wife, Magda, in the ancient Catalan city of Girona. They made a home in her village in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Their two daughters, Maria and Anna, gave Hugo much joy, as, later, did two grandchildren.

The marriage sadly broke down, but Hugo met a fellow interpreter from Madrid named Alicia, who would become his second wife.

His decades with Alicia, living in Madrid and Cataluña, were happy and fulfilling. Both excellent swimmers, they shared a love for snorkelling in the oceans of such far-flung places as Australia, Cuba and Zanzibar, as well as closer to home in the lovely bay overlooked by their house in Llançà. One of Alicia’s great gifts to Hugo came in the form of her passion for the language and culture of Greece, where they spent deeply valued time together.

Hugo’s life was much more than a brilliant career. Tall and physically robust, he rowed in a College boat despite his rackety night-for-day lifestyle while at the Hall. He was a genuine outdoorsman too, often enjoying long mountain hikes with friends or fellow members of the Pooley clan. An amused and cultured man, his tastes in literature, music and food were varied and profound.

What endeared Hugo to his many friends and acquaintances was an innate generosity of spirit. Life may have been competitive, tough, even strenuous, but while he treated the plight of others without judgment and with unconditional empathy, he was honest and strong enough not to take himself too seriously. And his quiet, unshowy selflessness never wavered. Sober since 1987, his long association with Alcoholics Anonymous was one of service as well as self-help.

It is poignant, that the very need for absolute simultaneity which made Hugo’s career such a demanding one, also means that little is left behind to mark it. In Shakespeare’s telling phrase it has, in one sense, “melted into air, into thin air.” And yet, in another perhaps more important sense, this is not so. The many people touched by the passing of this hugely talented and immensely lovable man, will always cherish what he brought into their lives.