Richard Seymour Hall

Richard Seymour Hall (22 July 1925 – 14 November 1997) was a British journalist and historian, writing primarily about Africa.

He was born in Margate, and spent several years of his childhood in Australia. On returning to the UK with his mother after his parents separated he attended the Hastings Grammar School. After a short period working as a junior reporter on local newspapers he enlisted and served as a signaler in the Royal Navy. After WW2 he obtained a place at Oxford University and received an honours degree from Keble College, Oxford. During this time he married Barbara Hall.

He worked first on Fleet Street for the Daily Mail, and then went to Northern Rhodesia where he was co-founder and editor of the African Mail (also known as the Central African Mail) with Alexander Scott.[1]

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he remained at the centre of the de-colonisation process in Zambia, with friendships that included Dr Kenneth Kaunda, who became first president of Zambia. Following Zambia's independence in 1964 he became editor of the Times of Zambia a newspaper owned by Tiny Rowland.

In 1967 he returned to England as African correspondent of The Observer, including reporting on the Biafran war. He later became editor of the Observer Magazine, and during that time was a proponent of an ultimately unsuccessful fight for greater journalistic independence from its owners. During the early 1980s he worked as a senior columnist for the Financial Times. In 1986 he founded his own financial and political bulletin Africa Analysis.[2][3]

He remained active both as editor of Africa Analysis and as an author until his death in 1997. Richard Hall married twice, first to Barbara Hall, a successful journalist and author in her own right and a respected crossword compiler and puzzles editor for the Sunday Times. His second marriage was to Carol Cattley, whom he met whilst working at the Observer. Richard Hall had 5 sons from his first marriage.