Richard Plant 1928-2020

Richard Plant (also known as Dick) was born in London on July 6^th 1928. Following national service in Tripolitania, he read Classics at Oxford. In 1953 he came to Wesley House and Fitzwilliam College to read for the Theological Tripos.

A series of appointments followed, mainly in the North and the Midlands, before retirement in Doncaster. His ministry was characterised by efforts to reach out to those outside the Church. In London, he had excrement put through his letter box and graffiti painted on his house because of the welcome given in his churches to African and Caribbean members. In Leigh in the 1960s he made the tabloid front pages by holding a memorial service for members of the Hells Angels Gang who had died on the road that attracted thousands of bikers.

Making use of his Classical education and the knowledge of Semitic languages acquired in Cambridge, Richard, was a keen numismatist. From the 1960s he began writing on coins, leading to his first book Arabic Coins and How to read Them, which won the Royal Numismatic Society’s Lhokta Memorial Prize in 1975. Five further books followed, several of which remain standard identification tools for collectors and dealers. A trademark of his writing were Richard’s line drawings of coins which he thought clearer than photographs. Excepting Greek, Semitic  Asiatic Coins and How to Read Them (1979) a monograph he regarded as his magnum opus, his books and articles were aimed at making numismatics accessible to those who lacked his own linguistic skills and historical knowledge.

He died on 2 August 2020 and is survived by Ann, his wife of 61 years, sons Peter and Stephen (Fitzwilliam 1987) and by five grandchildren.