After his death, his cottage was bought by rock star Sting. Sting was said to have bought the beautiful lakeland cottage as a Valentine's Day gift for his wife.
Great-great-grandson of the poet William Wordsworth, Richard lived his later life in a cottage in Grassmere in the Lake District England. He was known to regularily walk the 'Horseshoe' even into his late 70s. (The 'Horseshoe' is a high altitude walk around the Fairfield Heights, connecting Grassmere, Rydal and Ambleside)
In the early 1980s he was a guest professor in the English department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he directed a production of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" with himself in the role of Shylock.