Dudley Richards
Profile
Interviewing Dudley Richards about his long life (91 not out) is by no means easy – not because his memory is failing (it isn’t), but because he reacts with impatience to questions about the past: he finds the present and the future far more interesting subjects of conversation. However, in the course of a two-hour interview, I managed to glean enough facts to construct a brief biography of this loved and respected member of our congregation, who is also an Honorary Fellow and Honorary Chaplain of Harris Manchester College.
Born in 1911 in Liverpool, Dudley won a scholarship at the age of 18 to study at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and graduated there in Classics and Oriental Languages in 1934. To his youthful mastery of Latin, ancient Greek, and classical Arabic and Persian, he has subsequently added a reading knowledge of Sanskrit, Hebrew (ancient and modern), Russian, modern Greek, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, and Hungarian ("a bit rusty, that one"). He once began learning Turkish and is thinking of taking it up again, out of a concern for current political problems in the Near East.
At the age of 18, the Anglican faith of Dudley’s childhood, already waning, was displaced by a new-found interest in Unitarianism. The family had moved house and discovered the Ullet Road church, with its fine music and the inspiring preaching of the Revd. Lawrence Redfern. Dudley felt at home with the worship at Ullet Road, and subsequently he attended the Unitarian church in Cambridge in term time. In 1934 he was awarded a two-year research studentship at Pembroke College, the second year of which he was permitted to spend at Manchester College.
Having met and married Nancy Radcliffe, a Liverpool teacher, in 1938, Dudley needed to earn a living. After a short time spent teaching in a private school, and a year at Bradford Grammar School, he was accepted as a candidate for the Unitarian ministry. He was registered as a conscientious objector to military service, and graduated as a Bachelor of Divinity at Manchester University in 1942. Then he and Nancy moved to Bradford, where they served the Broadway Avenue congregation in their tin tabernacle from 1942 to 1953.
From 1953 to 1964 Dudley’s commitment to congregational education and young people found formal expression in employment at Essex Hall in London as Assistant Secretary in charge of the Unitarian General Assembly’s Religious Education and Youth Development Department. A two-year interlude at Manchester College on a Hibbert research scholarship led to his appointment to serve the college as Dean and Senior Tutor, assisting the Revd. Dr Harry Short – the kindly, scholarly Principal who rescued the College from near-extinction, increasing the numbers of resident students from one to 50, and overseeing the restoration of the dilapidated Arlosh Hall. Dudley served the College as Vice-Principal as well as Senior Tutor from 1974 until his retirement in 1977. He and Nancy, resident in the College, took a personal interest in the welfare of all the students. At the same time (and indeed until very recently), he preached occasionally for the Chapel Society, led Sunday-morning discussion groups, conducted weddings and funerals, and visited sick members of the congregation.
Dudley perceives his role in retirement as one of back-stage support for the Principal and the Chaplain. He says he feels exalted by the Sunday services in the chapel, and thinks that the Chapel Society is in a healthy state under the guidance of Peter Hewis. Living quietly with Nancy in East Oxford, he takes delight in her accomplishments: after teaching infants in Blackbird Leys and the Park Hospital, she developed her skills as a photographer and (at the age of 72) was made a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society; her stunning black-and-white images often appear in The Inquirer.
If he had not become a minister, Dudley might have had a career as a singer. His fine baritone voice enriches many services in our chapel and special occasions in the college: who will forget his recent Sunday-morning improvisation on ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, or his rendition of ‘The Amorous Goldfish’ at a dinner in the Arlosh Hall? His physical health is not so good these days (marred by a touch of lameness and deafness, and an episode of cancer), but he has the mental vigour of a much younger person. He can always be relied upon for an unorthodox and challenging contribution to debates, but equally for his loving concern for the Chapel Society and its members – and for his perennial habit of quoting from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome: "Be ye not conformed to the ways of this world, but be ye TRANSFORMED by the renewing of your mind!" Catherine Robinson March 2003 (Dudley Richards died in November 2007, aged 96)