Theo Richmond (1929–2022)

Theo Richmond was born to a family of Jewish immigrants in East London. His father Sam Richmond (who Anglicized his surname from Ryczke) owned a modest carpet business and his mother Bertha was a homemaker. His parents had left their hometown of Konin, Poland for the UK just before World War I.

Theo was educated at St. Albans School and completed two years of national service as a teacher with the Royal Air Force. He graduated with a degree in international economics from the London School of Economics. He became a publicist for Rank Films and then worked as a freelance publicist for authors. With the encouragement of John and Ray Boulting, he began to direct television series and make documentaries. He also contributed articles on history and the arts to newspapers and periodicals. He was best known for his only book, the internationally acclaimed Konin: A Quest, published in 1995, a blend of social history, collective biography, and personal memoir. It took seven years to complete and involved first-hand interviews with 400 former residents of the small town, the site of the murder of thousands of Jews by the Nazis in World War II. The book won the Royal Society of Literature's W.H. Heinemann Award and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize, and was called "a stunning achievement in literary journalism" by The New York Times reviewer.