Career
As part of the British Documentary Film Movement, he worked with the Government Printing Office Film Unit from 1933, before replacing Paul Rotha as head of Strand Films in 1937. In 1939, he moved to Canada with John Grierson, where he launched the National Film Board of Canada"s Canada Carries On and World in Action film series, for which he made many films. A few years after the war, he returned to Britain and worked as a producer for the Crown Film Unit between 1948 and 1950.
In 1957, he became chairman of the Film Centre International.
He later produced documentaries for Shell. His interest in history led him to write The Heartland (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1970.
Later reissued as The Barbarians of Asia). Dedicated to Grierson, the book "gives the grand sweep of European and Asian history in terms of the continual conflict between the great coastal civilizations (China, India, Persia, the Middle East, Europe) and the barbarian horsemen from the central Asian steppes (Huns, Turks, Mongols, and others)."
Stuart Legg married Margaret Amos (1910–2002), daughter of Sir Percy Maurice Amos Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire KC (of the prominent Amos legal dynasty).
However, they lived apart for many years.