After six years on the Royal Navy training ship HMS Conway, Hughes-Stanton attended the Byam Shaw School (1919-22), the R.A. Schools (1922-23) and Underwood’s Brook Green School (1921-25), being left in charge of the school when Underwood visited America 1925-28. A founder member of the English Wood Engraving Society in 1925, Hughes-Stanton joined the Society of Wood Engravers in 1932. In 1930, with Gertrude Hermes, whom he had married in 1926, Hughes-Stanton moved to Powys to direct and engrave for the Gregynog Press. Here he produced some of his best work. He left Gregynog in 1933 and moved to East Anglia where he founded the Gemini Press. In later decades, Hughes-Stanton turned to using lino for colour printing and to create much larger, spectacular, images as he went increasingly abstract.