Remembering Richard Briers

By Angela Macmillan, Editor of A Little, Aloud

Before Chatto and Windus published A Little, Aloud in 2010, they put together a mini version and sent it to the great and good and influential in order to drum up support. The response was overwhelming but perhaps none so warm and spontaneous as that of Richard Briers who immediately telephoned a surprised and delighted editor at Chatto saying, “What can I do to help?”  What he did was to write a wonderfully warm encomium for the back cover, turn up on a June evening for the launch at Waterstones Piccadilly and give a spirited and heartfelt reading of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' to a delighted audience and as if that were not enough, give an interview to The Reader magazine (Issue 41) about his reading life and his work as patron of Interact Reading Services.

"I read to stroke victims so know first-hand the power of good that reading aloud can do. This first-rate collection is a real treasure trove and I can't recommend it highly enough" Richard Briers

Richard Briers at the launch of A Little, Aloud

The many tributes have all described a thoroughly decent, generous, funny, enthusiastic and kind man. We found him to be all these things and remember him with affection. The Reader Organisation has good reason to be grateful to him.

Click here to listen to Richard reading The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Richard Briers with (l-r) Joanna Trollope, Jane Davis, Blake Morrison and Angela Macmillan