Richard, or Dick to his friends, was a distinguished financial and economic historian, and professor of contemporary British history at King’s College London. He specialised in UK banking and financial history but had a wide range of interests across the field, as reflected in his columns for this newspaper.
He co-authored HSBC’s official history for its 150-year anniversary, The Lion Wakes, as well as official histories of Schroders and of Orion. Other recent publications include a study of the financial crisis at the start of the First World War, Saving the City: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914, and an account of the UK’s exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, Six Days in September: Black Wednesday.
Richard had written for GlobalCapital since 2015 on a historical column, Old Money, offering a longer, deeper perspective on the financial markets, and covering topics as diverse as fraud, front-running the battle of Waterloo, the defaults of Greece and Argentina, helicopter money, the Pope, privatisations from the UK to Saudi Arabia, and the complex and varied histories of the institutions which throng the capital markets today.
In person, Richard was warm, friendly and engaging, with a kind word for everyone, and a keen inquisitive mind. He’ll be deeply missed, in these pages and elsewhere. Our deepest sympathies are with his family and friends.