Dick Walker (from the Biography)
RICHARD WALKER

Richard Walker, better known as Dick, was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, on 29th May, 1918. He is considered to be one of the most influential anglers in the history of the sport.

He was educated at Saffron Walden and Letchworth before going up to Cambridge in 1936. At Caius College he read engineering, until his degree was interrupted by the onset of the Second World War. During the war he worked for the RAE at Farnborough and played a prominent role in the development of radar technology. When the war ended he joined the family firm, Lloyds and Co., manufacturers of high quality grass-cutting machinery as technical director.

Dick Walker was an accomplished angler. He started fishing at the age of four with his grandfather and held the record for carp in the UK for thirty years with Clarissa, a 44lb carp caught at Redmire pool in Herefordshire in 1952. He was one of the first to apply scientific thought to angling. His inventions included the electronic bite-alarm and he was also instrumental in the development of the carbon-fibre fishing rod. One of his personally handmade Mark IV carp rods is worth, today, thousands of pounds. As a member of the Carp Catchers’ Club he was instrumental in the great advances in carp fishing methods in the 1950s - advances that in many ways define the carp specimen fishing of today. Whether or not he would have approved of what it has become is another matter.

In addition to the many books, Dick also wrote for the angling press. His first article on fishing appeared in his school magazine. He went on to write regular columns in the London Evening Standard and most memorably, The Angling Times.

He died in 1985 after a long battle with cancer.

Medlar published the biography of Richard Walker in 2007 - Richard Walker - Biography of an Angling Legend

You can read more about Richard Walker at dickwalker.co.uk


Other Medlar titles:
The Stone-Walker Letters by Peter Stone includes correspondence between Dick Walker and Peter Stone - a window on to a great friendship between arguably two of the most influential anglers of the twentieth century.