Daill Mail - 08.08.2019

Daily Mail, Thursday, August 8, 2019 Page 31

BUILD OUR FAMILY

sand and dust from Afghanistan

on his hands. He looked really ill.’

She had been told his memory

was bad ‘so I had a list of questions

to ask him. The first was “What is

my name?” which he answered

correctly. The second was “Who is

Homer Simpson’s son?”

‘We had both loved the Simpsons

and watched it together. But he

couldn’t remember Bart and I

thought, ‘‘Oh my God, Daddy’s

really sick.’’ That was a moment

of shock!’

They both laugh at the absurdity

of the exchange now.

Stewart was well enough to

attend his battalion’s medal

ceremony at Sandringham that

November. But the long-term

impairments caused by his head

injury were apparent; memory and

hearing loss, anger issues,

imbalance and a sometimes

embarrassing lack of restraint.

‘He has become a social hand

grenade,’ Melissa told me at

the time.

The next few years were very

difficult for the Hill family as

Stewart saw the life he had

expected to lead fall away and

struggled to cope. He felt

abandoned by the military.

‘The worst week came the follow-

ing May,’ he says. ‘I got a phone

call to say I was selected for pro-

motion to the rank of Lieutenant

Colonel. I thought ‘‘Yes! This is my

career made, I am back on track.’’

‘But that same week I went to

Headley Court in Surrey [then the

military rehabilitation centre] and

saw my care worker.

‘They wanted me to do a

presentation on my brain injury.

The following morning I was lying

crying on my bed because I did

not know where to start. My

injury was preventing me. And

that was that as far as the Army

was concerned.’

Liv asks him: ‘And how long

did it take you for you to

accept that?’

‘Oh, by 2012 when I was medi-

cally discharged. I wanted to be

out by then,’ says her father.

‘Because you were angry at

them?’ she continues.

‘Yes, because I was angry.

My life was s***,’

says Stewart.

Liv tells him:

‘The times

I remembered

you before the

injury were very

happy times. I was

a daddy’s girl grow-

ing up and you were

often away and that made me sad.

Then the dynamic changed. It did

not help that when you got

the injury you would get angry

very quickly.

‘It was challenging. We butted

heads. It became a testy relation-

ship because of my age and

because of your injury.’

She adds: ‘We still butt heads

now, but I have so much respect

for what you went through and the

recovery. As a family we have

learned to communicate.’

Stewart’s epiphany was the

discovery of his creative abilities.

In recent years he has appeared

in the West End in a play about

Afghanistan, directed by Trevor

Nunn. He is also a published poet

and accomplished landscape and

portrait painter. Actor Ray

Winstone — whom he met

while working on the play

and who has supported him

— and the Duke of Bedford are

among an eclectic range of public

figures he has put on canvas.

At the same time, his older

daughter — he

has an eight-

year-old as well

— found her

own place in the

arts world.

Aged 14, she

began to attend

the Nottingham^

Actors Studio.

At 16, she

had her first

professional

audition — for

Three Girls.

‘I only went to gain

some audition experi-

ence,’ she says. ‘All I knew

was they wanted girls who were

natural. The performance should

be very understated and subtle.

Whatever they saw in me was right

for the character.’

After the second audition, she

was told she had the part of Ruby,

one of the three abused girls of the

title role. At first, her parents had

their reservations because of the

subject matter and strong

language the part demanded. ‘But

we read the script several times

and saw it was a story that needed

to be told,’ says Stewart.

On set, she had to be accompa-

nied by a chaperone because of

her age. During filming, she met

the girl she was portraying.

‘She talked about her own expe-

riences as if she was making a cup

of tea,’ says Liv. ‘It was so strange

and awful it just seemed to have

gone over her head.’

The role ‘took me completely out

of my bubble from this lovely home

in Derbyshire. It was very hum-

bling.’ Three Girls won a host of

After a Taliban bomb

tore into his brain, Major

Stewart Hill became a

‘social hand grenade’.

Now, in a profoundly

moving interview, he

and his daughter —

an award-winning TV

actress — describe how

he learned to be her

daddy all over again

Devoted:

Stewart and

his daughter

Liv have

rebuilt their

relationship

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Picture: BRUCE ADAMS

Talent: Liv (circled) in the TV drama Three Girls

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