Richard will be greatly missed by his family and friends.

We are conscious that some people from the time when Richard was at the School may not be in contact with us and we would ask if you could pass on this information to those that you know.

As is the usual practice, we would like to place an obituary for Richard in the 2023-24 OI Journal and would be very grateful for any stories or memories you may wish to share which we could put together for the publication. Please address any contributions to me through oldipswichians@ipswich.school

Sally Webber

OI Chair

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The Development Office at Ipswich School called me on Friday to pass on the sad news that Richard died last Sunday. I have subsequently spoken with his sister who told me that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer some time ago and had not recovered fully from a chest infection he contracted in February.

Despite spending most of his working life with one company, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and nearly all of it abroad - in Zambia, Vietnam, Thailand - he had retired just before Covid and had moved back to the UK. He had many memories of his time at Ipswich School and was a generous donor to the Founding Futures bursary campaign.

The funeral (which will be live-streamed) will be in Leatherhead on 28th June and his sister will share further details when they are known. 

Attached is a photo he sent me of the 1981 Holden House dinner held in the Town Hall (Richard Peters speaking, Richard Hudson OI is sitting far left, Mike Bannan, teacher and Head of Holden is to RP’s Right).

Richard Wilson (OI 1970-81)

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Richard's funeral will be held on Friday 28th June at 11am at:

Randalls Park Crematorium, Randalls Road, Leatherhead KT22 0AG, followed by a reception at The Foley, 106 Hare Lane, Claygate KT10 0LZ.

Richard had a gap year, worked in Ipswich for about 6 months and then in the summer of 1982 travelled with school friend Richard Hudson to the Artic Circle from Vancouver.

Richard then went on to St Catherine's College, Oxford to study Geography, where he also became very involved with the College rowing society. Richard rowed for his college and held various positions on the committee. He graduated in 1985.

After graduating, Richard joined Coopers and Lybrand (now Price Waterhouse and Coopers (PwC)) in London and trained as a chartered accountant. Having had a taste of travelling, Richard asked for an overseas posting and went to Harare, Zimbabwe in 1989. He worked there for a year before being transferred to Ndola, Zambia.

Then Richard moved to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam in 2001 and worked there for the rest of his career. During this time Richard became a Partner.

Richard was diagnosed with neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer in 2017, at his annual health insurance check up and started treatment. In 2019 Richard decided to retire early, move back to his house in Claygate, Surrey and continued to pursue his passion for travelling while he still had his health. He went to visit his sister in New Zealand in February 2020 and then to a friend's in Melbourne, Australia. They had tickets to watch the Grand Prix and saw the first day of racing but then Richard flew back to the UK due to the COVID outbreak.

Over the next three years Richard visited friends and colleagues in Vietnam between treatments; his last trip being in November 2023.  Unfortunately his health took a turn for the worse in February this year. Richard passed away on 2nd June.

Kathryn Taylor (Richard's sister)

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I recall that Richard joined the sixth form at Ipswich School in 1979 after his family moved to nearby Westerfield. Though starting his life in Felixstowe, his father’s job meant they moved a number of times and Richard had previously been at Watford Grammar and the Perse
School in Cambridge. Richard came into Holden House and whilst he and I didn’t overlap in subjects, Richard being primarily a geographer, we became good friends and regular, if not quite front running, members of the cross country team. We also, along with Mark Hawtin, managed to persuade the school in the summer that our games days could be spent playing golf. This was having
borrowed Richard’s mum’s car to get around. A very enjoyable set up.

Richard was also super organised, a characteristic he retained through life. At school he very efficiently organised most of the Holden House events. A situation that as Head of House I was very happy about! If Richard hadn’t just arrived in the sixth form I am sure he
would have been the Head of House. Both Richard and I wanted to have a gap year before starting University and slowly came up
with a joint plan to travel round the wilder parts of western Canada and Alaska. We worked for 9 months, Richard with the HMRC office in Ipswich and myself at a fledgling software company (started by an ex Ipswich School physics teacher). This gave us the princely sum
of $10 a day all in for a 3 month trip. Not a lot even in 1982! 

We landed in Vancouver in early June and spent a few days of preparation hosted by an eccentric old family contact. This contact kindly dropped us in the Whistler ski resort after a somewhat terrifying drive up from Vancouver. The ski season had just finished and we camped on one of the main pistes, just out of sight of the town. After naively cooking up sausages, we soon found we had a couple of black bears wanting to join us. A memorable first night and we very quickly learned to cook, wash and sleep in separate locations. Also food always had to be stored up a tree to prevent overnight animal thefts.

In the next 3 months we managed to stick (just) to our $10/day budget by camping in our very small 2 man tent and getting around on foot or by hitchhiking. We travelled east as far as Calgary and north as far as Inuvik on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. We also stopped off
to go hiking in some of the spectacular national parks. This included a week in Mount McKinlay (now Denali) park where we saw more grizzly bears than humans. In all we hitchhiked nearly 8,000 miles and met a huge array of uniformly friendly locals, truckers, fellow
travellers and holiday makers. It was the time of the Falklands war and many, especially the Canadians, responded very positively to seeing the union jack we had with us. Richard and I got on incredibly well and I don’t recall any major disagreements. Even when
on one occasion in a remote, notorious spot we didn’t get a lift until our third day of hitching. He naturally had a very positive approach to life and would typically see the humorous side of even quite bleak situations. We did however exhaust pretty much all conversation topics in those 3 months and amicably went our separate ways on getting back to the UK. After completing his geography degree at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, Richard spent much of his working life overseas in Africa and South East Asia. When our paths did cross it was great catching up and reminiscing on our school and travel experiences. This included more recently a trip to the Emirates stadium, where Richard was a season ticket holder, to happily watch Arsenal in winning form.

It is very sad to think that there will be no more catchups or reminiscing. I regret not seeing him more often in recent years when he was largely based back in the UK. Richard was very successful in his working life as a senior partner with PWC and was instrumental in
overseeing huge growth in PWC’s Vietnam practice where he lived for many years. At the same time though he always remained the easy going, generous and friendly man I remember travelling with.

Richard Hudson (OI 1974-81)