Richard Chamberlain – The man behind
the camera
By Margaret Sheard – Video by Chris Elliott
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Richard Chamberlain at The Round Tower where he had an exhibition of his photographs which were taken in Cyprus in
Richard has agreed to delve into his memory and come up with some information about his time in Cyprus where he did part of his British National Service with the Royal Signals, along with his twin brother Mike. They were then 18 years old and thought they had arrived in Paradise. I am always interested in the actual person as well as their achievements so I asked Richard to tell me a li
Richard and his twin brother, Mike, were born on 20th January 1935 in Acton, London. His first marriage was in March 1960 in Ilford and there were 2 children, a son and a daughter. Richard later married again to his present wife Vivian in 1977. Richard’s daughter, Lynne lives in North Cyprus so he visits her as often as he can.
I asked Richard how he came to develop an interest in photography and he said his brother, Joh
Richard’s first job was in the printing trade as a Compositor where he did a 7 year apprenticeship and eventually with new technology emerging he went on to learn all about photo-setting. After a while with 2 friends they started up their own photo-setting business in Clerkenwell, London where they eventually had 60 employees. After about 12 years Richard decided to move on and his partners bought him out of the business.
The next venture was buying vintage Rolls Royce cars and starting a wedding car hire business, he later sold this business and opened
Richard bought a large house with land, this was Huntsman’s House in Billericay, England which was a hunting dog kennels so was ideal for his new venture. So started the training of greyhounds, there were 10 in all and Richard said the dogs all stayed with him to the end of their days. One of his triumphs was with a dog called Huntsman Nippy who had the track record at Brighton of 970 yards in the fastest time. Richard’s dogs raced at many of the well-known greyhound tracks in and around the London area and he continued with this business for about 15 years and then he decided to sell the house and move to Suffolk, where he and Vivian still live.
To see more of Richard’s photographs at his exhibition, see the video below.