Richard Kershaw was born in Leeds in 1946 and educated in Norwich and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Music.

He was a music teacher at Aberdeen University and, from 1975, at Sherborne School in Dorset. During his time at Sherborne, he achieved a D. Phil. from Oxford University and has continued to teach part-time at the school following his retirement in 1999.

Richard Kershaw plays the piano and the ‘cello. Retirement has allowed him to spend more time composing, as well as bird-watching and cultivating his extensive rock garden.