Lord Gibson

Richard Patrick Tallentyre Gibson, Baron Gibson (5 February 1916 – 20 April 2004) was a British businessman in the publishing industry, and later arts administrator.

Gibson was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford. He became a in 1937, and he joined the Middlesex Yeomanry on the outbreak of the Second World War. He served in North Africa, but was captured at Derna in Libya in April 1941. He was held as a prisoner-of-war at Camp 41 near Parma in northern Italy, where he shared a room with Edward Tomkins and Nigel Strutt, all three becoming firm friends. Strutt was repatriated on medical grounds, and Gibson and Tomkins were moved to another camp. He and Tomkins escaped from the new camp, and spent 81 days walking 500 miles (800 km) south to Bari, crossing the Apennines and German lines, to return to Allied-held territory. Gibson then served with Special Operations Executive and the Foreign Office.

He married Dione Pearson in 1945, a member of the Pearson PLC dynasty and granddaughter of Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray and of 1st Baron Brabourne. Gibson joined the family's Westminster Press group of regional newspapers in 1947 as a trainee journalist, rapidly rising up through the business, consolidating and expanding its media interests. He became a director of the Financial Times, The Economist, and of Pearson, and chairman of Pearson Longman in 1967, and of the Financial Times in 1975. He was chairman of the Pearson group from 1978 to 1983.

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