Richard Lewis

Musician, business leader, school governor – Richard Lewis is a man of many parts who enjoys life to the full.

In this profile, he tells us how the Bedales culture of self-reliance, together with his own reluctance to be pigeon-holed into any one academic discipline, has laid the foundation for his successful career.

There were plenty of reasons why Bedales represented the ideal place for Richard Lewis to pursue his education as a teenage student. Richard had always been a musical child with a rare gift in that sphere; he was also an academic all-rounder who had a visceral dislike of playing sport and possessed a character which dictated that respect, even towards teachers, should be earned, rather than bestowed as a matter of course.

There was also a family connection of sorts. Richard’s mother had been offered a place at Bedales years before him but because it was not on a scholarship, her family was unable to take up the offer. Her father, a convinced Communist, might have been expected to rejoice in such an outcome but Bedales was an exception to the general rule of State education being the most desirable one in the eyes of Richard’s grandfather. “The fact that John Badley was a Fabian made the school an acceptable choice as far as he was concerned,” Richard explains.

Richard’s education began at a primary school in Barnet, North London, before he moved on to a prep school where he did well without feeling especially enthused by his surroundings.

It was clear that he might benefit from a private school education but only at the right destination for a boy of his nature and abilities. “I did the Westminster and Bedales entrance exams,” he recalls. “Fortunately for me, I managed to get a music scholarship as a boarder at Bedales and that sealed the decision very quickly.”

Richard and Bedales proved to be a happy meeting of minds and temperaments. “From day one, I loved the camaraderie and, coming from a family where I was the youngest by nine years, I also found it refreshing to be among friends of my own age,” he says. “As a music scholar, I was occasionally tapped on the shoulder and reminded of my responsibility to perform to a certain standard but in general, I found it easy to respect the teachers at Bedales – they were just so good.”

Unsurprisingly, Jonathan Willcocks, the school’s musical guru of the day, was one of the seminal influences on Richard at Bedales. “Jonathan was the main reason I got my scholarship, I think, and he was a demanding, talented and inspirational figure for me,” Richard says. “He also got me more into singing in a chamber choir where the quality was always pretty high. But that was Bedales for you – music was front and centre and it was exceptionally good.”

Academically, Richard was very much the polymath, refusing to be pigeon-holed either as an arts man or a scientist and selecting A Levels in Music, Maths, Further Maths and History (he later put the Further Maths to one side).

Here, two more of Richard’s major Bedales influences had their greatest effect on him. “Ruth Whiting had a huge influence on me,” he asserts. “She could be terrifying – you were expected to read, understand and critique large volumes of material and you knew you would be publicly quizzed by her – but her style suited me and I was keen to respond to the high standards that she set for all of us.”

“On the Maths side, I must mention Dennis Archer,” Richard continues. “He had this brilliant ability of explaining complex concepts in a way you could easily absorb. To do that, you need complete mastery of your subject, which Dennis very much had. He was also such an interesting man, very fond of music, among other things, and nothing was ever too much trouble for him. When I came back briefly to Bedales as a seventh-term Oxbridge candidate, I stayed with Dennis at his home. He is someone else to whom I owe a great debt.”

A place at Girton College, Cambridge to read History would be the reward for Richard’s academic efforts, where he was appointed Organ Scholar, thereby maintaining his interest in music.

“Intellectually, I knew it was time for me to move on from Bedales but it was still quite an emotional wrench to leave somewhere that I had always found so comfortable and collegial,” he says. “Luckily, Girton was another friendly, iconoclastic place and I felt right at home there as well. That was largely down to the college’s origins as a pioneer for women’s education – it had a very different atmosphere to some of the men’s colleges that had been grudgingly forced to accept female students after many centuries of resisting the idea!”

Despite his musical talent, Richard was never persuaded by the possibility of a career as a musician. Instead, he has spent the past 35 years building up a formidable CV in the commercial world. Since 2000, he has been a leading light at Auction Technology Group (ATG), where he was appointed Chief Operating Officer in 2012, playing a major role in building the company’s position in the online auction world via sites such as the-saleroom.com and LiveAuctioneers.com, and later taking ATG public on the London Stock Exchange.

“If you’re going to be a professional musician, you need to practise for at least eight hours a day; I could never be bothered to do more than one,”

Richard cheerfully admits. “Bedales allowed me to work out my own career path in later years. The high level of autonomy at Bedales meant that I was well suited to working in a technology business where we created products that revolutionised the way our customers did business. Technology businesses typically generate huge volumes of both quantitative and qualitative data. The numerical and analytical skills that I honed at school gave me an excellent foundation for working in this environment. You could say that Bedales set me up for life – I responded so well to being treated like an adult and so I felt able to open the doors to all the opportunities that were around me. It was such a happy place for me.”

The connection lives on to the present day. Richard will continue to serve as a Bedales Governor until 2032; meanwhile, he also heads the school’s John Badley Foundation.

“I’m so grateful for what I received from Bedales,” he says. “Giving something back to a brilliant concept like the Badley Foundation strikes me as the least I could do in return.”