Richard is the son of a farm worker and a teacher, brought up on farms in rural Herefordshire. Unlike the other boys in the village school, who all aspired to drive steam trains, Richard thought it might be boring to have just one job and decided to look for variety. In this at least he has been remarkably successful, having worked – and this is not an exhaustive list – fishing langoustines, as a youth hostel warden, and operating aerial ‘Skylines’ to extract timber in the mountains of Ross-shire. He has been a builder, a farmhouse cider-maker, a translator and a charcoal burner, and a commercial eel-fisherman, and at one point quite by accident became a teacher working with children with learning difficulties. Having led such a variety of lives he is quite delighted and excited at the possibility of a new life as an author, a choice made largely as the result of the growing concerns inevitable for anyone with an ecological awareness, sharpened in Richard’s case by much time spent working in nature.
Agent: Patrick Walsh