Richard Hamilton died in a canoeing accident in a ravine on the River Gaur in the remote Highlands of Scotland on the 22nd May 2005
Richard had a huge range of interests - in people, places, history, art, music, the natural world - and he wanted to experience them all. He was the eldest of three children of Janet and Rollin, both doctors. Born almost ten years before his younger brother, he roamed far and wide in the countryside around their home, gaining a love for nature and exploration. He would spend hours, head down, walking across newly ploughed, rain-washed fields finding things that most would overlook - fossils, flint implements, or arrow heads. One of his finds was a Roman bracelet, which lead to the discovery of a hitherto unknown Roman villa. Such discoveries fuelled his application to Caius to read Archaeology and Anthropology.
Richard went to Winchester College ('83-'88), and before starting at Caius, Cambridge travelled for a year on a trip which almost cost him his life when he developed septicaemia from leech bites in the jungles of Borneo . He loved university life, thriving on the friendships he made, the challenges (planting an inflatable gorilla on top of St John's was a particular favourite), and the intellectual stimulation. He studied Archaeology & Anthropology and History graduating in 1992. |
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His choice of student jobs in the holidays was based less on the ability to earn money, than as a search for new experiences. Over the years he had jobs as a labourer on an Australian cattle station in the outback, a member of a New Zealand bungee jumping firm, a warehouseman, a potter, a trawlerman, a journalist, and a worker with the homeless.
He studied law in London and York ('92-'94), and qualified and worked as a solicitor with Allen & Overy ('95-'98). He seized upon opportunities to conduct pro bono death row appeals for prisoners in Trinidad and Jamaica . Being Richard, he did not do so just by telephone, but funded himself to travel to the West Indies to interview the prisoners and witnesses and to collect new evidence for presentation to the Privy Council back in London . His work with these cases continued long after he had left Allen & Overy and he was still involved with them at the time of his death.
He never lost his enthusiasm for writing and art. While at school he had won the Queen's Gold Medal for English, and went on to write poetry, newspaper articles - winning the Times Law Award - and children's books. He won the Medical Art Society Prize in 2004. As antidote to an office desk, his weekends and evenings were spent training for and passing the gruelling selection for the Territorial SAS. A course in Emergency Medicine as part of SAS training was influential in making his career move into medicine.
In medicine he studied first at King's College ('00-'03) in London and then moved to Sheffield University for his clinical studies with the lure of the wild places of the Peak District and being closer to Scotland. As ever, he crammed his time with new ventures - flying with Yorkshire University Air Squadron and writing a book on sleep. It is fitting that, although he did not live to complete his clinical training, he was awarded a posthumous medical degree by the University.
A painter, a poet, an explorer, a journalist, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a lawyer, a medical student, a special forces soldier - Richard was all that and more. He died in canoeing accident on the River Gaur in Scotland on 22 nd May 2005. He was aware of the risks that he took in his life, but knowingly took them as a route to live through many fantastic experiences. His memory lives on, testified not only by the huge numbers who attended the celebration of his life held in Sheffield University , but also those who joined with us in thought from as far afield as the Greenland icecap and in caves in Australia.
He leaves his parents and two younger brothers, Gordon, a doctor, and Alastair, a biology undergraduate at Oxford University.
Written by John Kennedy |
