![]() ![]() He showed considerable interest in birds from an early age, together with an innate talent for drawing them. Little is known of his early years, other than that when he was about six years old the family moved to the south-west (where his brother John was born) and that young Richard was educated at a naval school in Bisley (where as a schoolboy HW had attended the annual schools’ rifle competition). RAR was born in Blackheath, London (the same area that HW went to school and lived until he went down to Devon in 1921) on. But that brief statement only tells the barest outline of a considerable, and interesting, connection. He was a great admirer of HW’s writing from an early age, and met HW during the latter’s years on the Norfolk Farm during the Second World War he much later illustrated a series of articles that HW wrote for the Daily Express. After the Second World War he lived and worked at Cley-next-the-Sea on the North Norfolk coast, setting up a Bird Observatory there. Richard Allan Richardson, notable ornithologist and bird artist, signed his work, and so tends to be known as, ‘R.A.R.’. It would seem to have been very labour intensive, but apparently saved enormous and precious weight and space on transport planes. ![]() In the Second World War this system was adopted by the armed forces and was known as the Army Postal Service, or APS. This photograph was then folded just below the address, put into an envelope and then sent to the recipient. The negatives were then sent by aeroplane to England, where they were developed into photographs 11 x 14 cms. Letters were written on a special form which was photographed on a roll of film. They are of varying quality, due no doubt to the involved production method of airgraphs – a system invented by the Eastman Kodak company in the 1930s in conjunction with Imperial Airways to reduce the weight of letters being sent by air. The twelve 'Wild Birds of the Month' airgraphs that RAR sent to Master Richard Williamson are presented below. ![]()
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