Richard Thomas was a career diplomat. Early postings included Ghana, NATO HQ, India and Czechoslovakia, before he became ambassador to Iceland and to Bulgaria, and high commissioner in the Eastern Caribbean. His time in Bulgaria coincided with the collapse of communism. After retirement, he headed the international arm of a disability charity, and helped run a couple of arts festivals. He is married to Catherine, an Australian, and they have three children and numerous grandchildren. He was appointed CMG in 1990.
After an improbable beginning, Richard Thomas’s diplomatic career took him to some unlikely places, like Bhutan where his motor-scooter spawned an aid programme, or twenty thousand feet up in Robert Maxwell’s private jet buying up post-communist Bulgaria, or a NATO base in the North Atlantic to ...
