Richard was born in North Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. He spent most of his early life on Royal Air Force bases in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and attended St Peter's School in York as a boarder. He studied law at the University of Manchester, and spent the following ten years as a lawyer specialising in multi-million pound commercial disputes. 

Between 2015 and 2018, Richard self-published The Art of War trilogy, a sequence of epic military space operas, as well as a number of prequels, novellas and short stories.

 

Richard's traditionally-published debut fantasy trilogy, The Empire of the Wolf, sold to Orbit Books in a pre-empt in August 2020 for a six-figure sum. The first instalment, The Justice of Kings (2022), was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and has been translated into seven languages. The second and third volumes, The Tyranny of Faith and The Trials of Empire were released in February 2023 and 2024 respectively. 

 

In 2024 Orbit Books announced that they had bought a second trilogy from Richard set 200 years after the events of the Empire of the Wolf series: The Great Silence. The first book, Grave Empire, will be released in February 2025. 

 

Richard has also sold short fiction to Grimdark Magazine and Black Library, and has several unannounced SFF projects releasing in 2025 and 2026. 

Richard currently lives with his wife and three small boys in Sydney, Australia.