Ian Handford: The famous journalist who LOVED Torquay

Second son of Frederick Jabez George Dimbleby the proprietor of the Richmond and Twickenham Times newspaper and his mother Gwendoline Bolwell daughter of a Bath surveyor. 

Richard's mother was a pillar of the Richmond Operatic and Dramatic Society and both  parents were volunteers in community fairs while being avid supporters of the Church and Temperance group. It is likely that these many connections made their families close as both were also important supporters of the National Liberal Party.

Richard was born on May 25th 1913 in Richmond where his father was editor of the family newspaper making him a powerful voice in the local community. When the First World War was announced Frederick was immediately seconded by Government to a Public Relations role while son Richard was about to start his education at the local preparatory school in Battle Sussex.

Richard would eventually attend Mill Hill School North London, where by 1927 he had won a metrication at his third attempt when age fourteen. By the age of eighteen he was working with the family newspaper and where he Miss Dilys Thomas and being young was immediately smitten. He excelled at music and was proficient at the piano, but being physically very broad and heavy he aways disliked competitive games, preferring it seems to mess about in boats.

At this time women were a somewhat mystery to Richard, yet having fallen desperately in love with eighteen year old Dilys it was also the time he became bored working for the family firm. Eventually in 1934 he resigned and moved to the Southern and Bournemouth Echo based in Dorset.

But he forever missed Dilys and would after just eighteen months return to London although not to work with the family firm but at the Advertiser Weekly in Richmond.  That brought him a first stroke of luck as "The Advertiser"  introduced him to wireless later tlo be known as the radio and even more importantly the BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation.

It would not be long before having joined the BBC Richard was then to suggest ways they might enliven their radio programmes. Every news editor at the BBC rejected his suggestions while some none Exec's at the Corporation actually recognised something uniqu e about this young man's ideas and reported their thoughts to Directors.

It was Richard's uniqueness of ideas which always followed extensiver research that made him authoritative and different. He insisted on authenticity and now invited those unofficial reviewers to watch him capture the sound effects of train wheels by dangling his microphone out of a toilet window of a carriage. Unique yes but also authentic being vital to his research and iltimately his authority which became his benchmark throughout his life.

Dilys meanwhile was now a journalist at "The Times" and amazingly she also was seen as authoritive, in her case on matters political,  Frederick was still her editor and was not the least surprised that Dilys was political, after her ancestry like his own, was always from the middle ground as Liberal. It was recorded that she had many fans in the Press Office, and though she had quite liked Richard she had seen him as being "just too reserved". 

He had rarely taken part in office arguments an ye eventually Dily's would later choose him against all others. Jonathan Dimbleby, Richards' first son many years later would recall him saying "he was often confused by females" and later recalling the wooing of Dilys said  "I was obviously openly proud of my conquest….. yet always a little bewildered, that from an array of suitors she eventually chose to be with me”.

In October 1936 Richard was given his first major assignment by the BBC, to attend and report on the Annual Conference of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (later the CPRE) being held in Torquay.  `It was the first of many visits to our area as can read later. ( continued next week)