Brooks Richards

Sir Francis "Brooks" Richards, KCMG, DSO, DSC & Bar (18 July 1918 – 13 September 2002) was a British diplomat and, during the Second World War, a director of operations for the Special Operations Executive. He married Hazel Williams in 1941 — she was the daughter of Lt-Col. Stanley Price Williams, Indian Army, who was also an SOE officer. They had one son, Francis Richards, and Hazel died in 2000.

Born in Southampton, Richards was educated at Stowe School and Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1939 he volunteered for the Royal Navy, commanding a minesweeper and then a motor torpedo boat flotilla. At the outbreak of war, he organised secret service agents for secret Channel crossings to France and across the Mediterranean to land in Tunisia.

In 1940 he was put in command of HMS Sevra (sunk that November), and in 1941 he was taken on by SOE. At the end of 1942 he was in Algiers when Admiral Darlan was also there at the time of the Allied landings. He met Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle several times before La Chapelle attempted to assassinate Darlan. Brooks Richards always denied that Bonnier de la Chapelle, who moved in Royalist circles, was working for SOE. In May 1943, after the liberation of Tunis, Commander Brooks Richards was head of F section in Algiers, directing SOE agents parachuted into enemy territory or landed at night on the beaches. In Algiers he also got to know Charles de Gaulle. He wrote an account of this period in his book Secret Flotillas.

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