Author: Richard Carr-Gomm
Fuller name: Major Richard Carr-Gomm
Title: Major
Born: 2nd January 1922
Died: 27th October 2008
Bio: Major Richard Carr-Gomm, OBE was the founder of the Abbeyfield Society, the Morpeth Society and the Carr-Gomm Society, UK charities which provide care and housing for disadvantaged and lonely people.

He was educated at Stowe School and served in the Royal Berkshire Regiment and the Coldstream Guards from 1939 to 1955. He was amongst the first troops to enter Belsen in April 1945. After leaving the Army in 1955 he became a volunteer home-help. Perceiving the loneliness of the people whom he was helping to be a particular problem, he spent his Army gratuity on buying a house which he invited some of them to share with him. In his subsequent life he founded a number of charities which run care homes for the elderly, the disadvantaged, and those suffering from loneliness. For this work he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1985, and in 2004 received a Beacon Prize for lifetime achievement.[2]