Richard “Dick” Fletcher – June 2, 1939 – March 1, 2025

RICHARD “Dick” Fletcher, a company director and retired teacher who taught at schools in Pakistan in the Sixties, has passed away.

He was born at Ladygrove Nursing Home, Didcot, on June 2, 1939, to parents Mollie and Will Fletcher, who ran a ladies’ dress shop in Wantage.

It is believed he was named after his mother’s father, Richard Ratcliffe, who had died in 1938 and of whom his parents seemed particularly fond.

At nursery school on Lyford, the head’s son at the nursery was also called Richard, so that was when he became Dick and that continued throughout his life.

He went on to attend primary school in Faringdon and then King Alfred’s, Wantage, and moved on to Tockington Manor Prep School, from September 1947 to July 1953.

Dick then studied at St Edward’s, Oxford, from September 1953 to July 1958 before beginning teaching languages while studying for an MA in English and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin.

Initially a poor Italian student, he improved after spending a year in Milan teaching English to young Italian women.

It was here he first encountered the British Council, an organisation that promotes the English language and culture in other countries.

Dick was awarded a scholarship and studied for a postgraduate certificate in teaching English as a foreign language for a year. He had spells teaching in Wales and Barcelona.

He then returned to Dublin and met his first wife Robin Williamson, whom he married at Trinity College on July 23, 1964.

Dick applied for a contract job with the council and being sent to Pakistan. The newly married couple boarded a passenger cargo ship in Liverpool and set off on a three-week voyage to Karachi.

“It was great fun,” recalled Dick. “We would spend the evenings dancing or doing quizzes and the food was good. At night they would set up a cinema screen at the back mast of the ship and we’d watch films in the moonlight.

“As a young married couple just out of university, it was a remarkable experience.”

After arriving at Karachi, the couple took a train nearly 1,000 miles to the city of Sargodha, where Dick began teaching at a Pakistan Air Force public school.

This had been set up after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The school provided free education for boys who were selected following a national competitive entry exam.

The condition of the English school was that after their studies, the boys would apply for entry to the air force.

Dick was an assistant housemaster and looked after 100 boys aged 12 to 17, teaching English as well as sports such as cricket, football and basketball.

He was taught to speak Urdu, the language of Pakistan, by Christian missionaries.

“They were the only people to teach foreigners at that time,” Dick recalled. “It meant I could tell the parable of the Prodigal Son but couldn’t shout at a lorry driver in traffic.”

Dick and his wife had their first daughter, Linda, in 1965. When the Indo-Pakistani War began later that year, the pupils and teachers were evacuated from the school, which was next to the runway of a military base.

They were moved to another air force school in Lower Topa, 7,500ft up in the western part of the Himalayas. He never returned to the school in Sargodha after accepting a job as head of English with the school in Lower Topa in September 1966.

He spent two years there before moving to Lahore, a major city in the east of Pakistan, where he joined the staff of the cathedral school.

Dick recalled: “I loved the hustle and bustle of the cities. It was also an incredible time to be in Pakistan. There was a lot of religious tolerance.”

He returned to Britain in 1970 where he got a job as a school inspector with the British Council and spent time at Leeds University as well as in Lesotho.

He moved to the council’s media department in 1978 and took trips to Malaysia, Sudan, Indonesia and Malawi training people to use media in education.

Dick “started again” in 1980 when he and Robin were divorced and met Judith Wilkinson.

Judith was a designer in educational television and ran educational courses for the British Council, which is how she met Dick.

Dick recalled: “Our first encounter did not bode well for the future. She asked me to give a talk at one of her courses. Busy me failed to prepare. I winged it. I was not thanked and I was not asked to speak to any of her courses ever again.

“Then, a nightmare for her, we were sent to Malawi together to run a course jointly in the use of radio and print for primary schools. I was going to have to work hard for Judith to become confident that I wasn’t going to continue winging it.

“We discovered we had so much more in common than we could ever have believed and we returned to Tavistock Square firm friends but most definitely not lovers.

“Ogden Nash may have taken the view that ‘Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker’, but in the case of my pursuit of Judith, it took two further visits to Malawi and three long years of attentive behaviour from me before we became lovers.”

They were married at Finsbury town hall on July 4, 1981, and they had their first child together, Lucy, on August 26, 1982, and their second daughter, Katy, on July 17, 1985.

In the same year the couple set up New Media Productions and in 1991 they moved to Pheasants in Mill End, which belonged to his mother-in-law, Mary.

In 2004 the couple sold their successful business to the Americans and retired. They then hatched a plan to rebuild their home with a brief of “a modern Palladian mansion”.

Planning permission was granted in November 2005 and the build was completed in 2016. In 2018 it was named as one of the best buildings in the South.

Pheasants won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ annual award and the designers Sarah Griffiths and Amin Taha were named RIBA’s project architects of the year.

The couple went on to host art at their home as part of the annual Henley Arts Trail and it was one of the most popular venues on the trail.

In September 2022, Dick went back to Pakistan where he was hosted by alumni of the Pakistan Airforce.

Dick was also a member of the Henley Residents Group, whose councillors are the ruling party on Henley Town Council. He and Judith would hold barbecues and afternoon teas at their home for members.

He was also an enthusiastic letter writer with numerous (and often humorous) contributions to the Henley Standard over the years.

Dick’s wife died on January 9 at the age of 80 and he passed away on March 1. His funeral was held on April 1 at Reading Crematorium.

He leaves behind his three daughters and grandchildren, Ava, Ollie, Sienna and Dylan.