In Rye News' last edition of 2020 we published an obituary illustrated with a portrait of Samuel Pepys (diarist and founder of the Royal Navy) as Dr Luckett had been the librarian of the Pepys Library in Magdalene College in Cambridge for many years, and we did not have a photo of Dr Luckett who had retired to the Rye area.
However the photo shown above and now received from Magdalene College, Cambridge of Dr Richard Luckett was taken in 1978 in the Magdalene College Fellows’ Gardens. But why did he retire to this area?
A previous article in Rye News possibly provides a clue, as a room in Magdalene (used for talks on Pepys) is called the Benson Room after a former Master of the College, and that Benson was a brother of EF Benson who was Mayor of Rye, lived in Lamb House, and wrote the "Mapp and Lucia" books. So Magdalene College has a very strong link to Rye, and that was possibly why Dr Luckett retired here.
