Brooks Richards

Sir Francis Brooks Richards (18 July 1918, Southampton - 13 September 2002, Dorchester), usually known as Brooks Richards, was a British diplomat and, during the Second World War, a director of operations for the Special Operations Executive. He married Hazel Williams in 1941 - she was the daughter of Lt-Col. Stanley Price Williams, Indian Army, who was also an SOE officer. They had one son, Francis Richards, and she died in 2000.

Life

Educated at Stowe School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1939 he volunteered for the Royal Navy, commanding a minesweeper and then a motor torpedo boat flotilla. At the outbreak of war, he organised secret service agents for secret Channel crossings to France and across the Mediterranean to land in Tunisia.

In 1940 he was put in command of HMS|Sevra (sunk that November), and in 1941 he was taken on by SOE. At the end of 1942 he was in Algiers when admiral Darlan was also there at the time of the Allied landings. He met Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle several times before La Chapelle attempted to assassinate Darlan. Brooks Richards always denied that Bonnier de la Chapelle, who moved in Royalist circles, was working for SOE. In May 1943, after the liberation of Tunis, Commander Brooks Richards was head of F section in Algiers, directing SOE agents parachuted into enemy territory or landed at night on the beaches. In Algiers he also got to know De Gaulle. He wrote an account of this period in his book "Secret Flotillas".

In Autumn 1944 he served in the staff of Duff Cooper, minister-resident charged with re-opening the British embassy in Paris, and in 1945 he became a reservist in the RNR. In 1944 to 1948 he was a press attaché in Paris, and in 1954 he began a diplomatic career, starting as first secretary and head of the administration in the Persian Gulf, a post he held until 1957. In 1958-59 he was Assistant Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary, before returning to France during De Gaulle's presidency to work as intelligence advisor at the British embassy from 1959 to 1964.

In 1964-65 he was head of the Department of Information Policy and Guidance, Commonwealth Relations Office, and in 1965-1969 he was delegated from there to the Cabinet Office. From 1969 to 1971 he was in Bonn, before acting as British ambassador to South Vietnam (from 1972 to 1974, during the Vietnam War) then Greece (1974-78, after the military junta fell from power). He was deputy secretary to the Cabinet Office from 1978 to 1980, Security Adviser to the Northern Ireland Office in 1980-81 and finally president of CSM Parliamentary Consultants from 1984 until his retirement in 1996.

Works

*Secret Flotillas, HMSO, 1996.

Honours

*UK : Distinguished Service Order (DSO) ; Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) and bar, 1943 ; Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (CMG), 1963 ; KCMK, 1976
*France : Légion d'honneur ; Croix de Guerre 1939-1945.

External links

* [http://www.specialforcesroh.com/browse.php?mode=viewiaward&awardid=2309 Photograph of Brooks Richards on the Special Forces Roll of Honour site]
* Obituary, Le Monde, 2 October 2002.