Richard Patrick Tallentyre Gibson (1916-2004) was born in London, in the Kensington borough, on 5 February 1916. Before the war, he had worked as a financial agent since 1937. When the war broke out, Gibson enlisted in the Territorial Army as a Second Lieutenant and later joined the Middlesex Yeomanry 2nd Armoured Division. He was deployed to North Africa, as the Middlesex Yeomanry was split into two sections; the first was sent to Palestine, while the second, including Gibson, was sent to the Western Egyptian Desert.

In 1941, Gibson was eventually captured near Derna, in Libya, and then handed over to the Italians in Subrata, where he remained for about ten days waiting for a ship to transfer him and other PoWs to Naples. After docking in the city, Gibson was transferred to the Sulmona prison camp and then to PG 49, Fontanellato, in the Province of Parma.

On 8 September 1943, while he was in the camp, Gibson learned of the Armistice and many prisoners, including himself and two of his friends, Edward Tomkins and Hugh Cradice, staged a mass escape.

Gibson and his companions had no idea about which way to take, and in the following days, they wandered around the countryside, fearing recapture by the Nazi-Fascist patrols in the area. In November, their conditions worsened, as Gibson and his friends suffered from circulation problems, which would trouble them for the rest of their lives.

They planned to reach the frontline on the Sangro River, in Abruzzo, as they believed it was nearby. However, they were grossly mistaken in their calculations, as well as in the idea that the Allied troops were rapidly advancing up the peninsula. 

Eventually, near Settefrati, they encountered a girl named Filomena, who was blind in one eye, and she offered them aid and food.

However, as the Allied troops were not advancing, the three decided to stop for a while with Filomena’s family. As she worked as a housemaid in the house of the village’s mayor, she could get hold of more food than the rest of the locals.

While the distance to walk appeared daunting, Gibson and his friends decided to resume their journey south to rejoin the Allied troops, and they marched for six weeks. Once they reached the Abruzzo region, they crossed the Sangro River but were soon forced to face up to their deteriorating physical conditions. Edward was hurt in a fall, and Gibson was the only one who could scout ahead to locate the Allied troops and send them to retrieve his friends.

When he encountered the Sergeant, Gibson realised he and his companions had made it and had returned behind Allied lines. The three men, after a short time spent resting in various hospitals in North Africa, were repatriated to the United Kingdom. Gibson arrived in Liverpool, where he was reunited with his relatives. However, his stay did not last long, as he volunteered with the War Office to join the Special Operations Executive and help the war effort in Italy.

He was sent back to Italy, first to Monopoli, where he was in charge of interrogating soldiers who had come from behind enemy lines, and later to Rome, where he participated in delivering supplies to the partisans until the end of the war. After returning to the United Kingdom, Gibson was assigned to the Psychological Warfare Branch of the Foreign Office. 

However, after his wedding to Dione Pearson in 1945, he decided to resign and join the family business, the Pearson Group, a publishing house, as its president. This marked the beginning of a long and successful business career as chair and director of various publishing companies and foundations, including S. Pearson & Son (later Pearson Plc) and the National Trust. 

Gibson had four children and died in Lye Green, East Sussex, on 20 April 2004.