Richard Sheppard, the son of a chaplain of Queen Victoria, was born in Windsor Castle on 2nd September 1880. As a young man he volunteered for the British Army in the Boer War, but a horse-drawn carriage in which he was travelling crashed, leaving his leg permanently slightly lame, so his military career ended before it had begun.

Instead, Sheppard went to Cambridge University. During vacations he did social work in the East End of London. This experience radicalized him, and he became associated with progressive political ideas.

Sheppard worked as the private secretary of Cosmo Lang, the Bishop of Stepney, before being ordained in 1907. He was chaplain at Oxford House, Bethnal Green, and in 1914 became Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. The First World War was beginning, and he went to be an army chaplain on the Western Front for some months; his experiences turned him into a pacifist.

Committed to helping the local population, Sheppard opened up the crypt of St Martin 's for the homeless. In 1924 Sheppard became the BBC's "radio parson". His broadcast services made him one of Britain 's best known religious figures. Ill-health forced him to resign from St Martin 's in 1926, but he continued to work for the BBC and to write for newspapers. He also wrote a controversial book, The Impatience of a Parson (1927) that was highly critical of the Church of England. Sheppard became Dean of Canterbury (1929-31), and a canon of St. Paul 's Cathedral in 1934.

Sheppard was concerned by the failure of the major nations to agree to international disarmament, and on 16th October 1934 he had a letter published in the Manchester Guardian inviting men to send him a postcard giving their undertaking to "renounce war and never again to support another." Within two days 2,500 men responded and over the next few weeks around 30,000 pledged their support for Sheppard's campaign.

In July 1935 he chaired a meeting of 7,000 members of his new organization at the Albert Hall in London . Eventually named the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), it had 100,000 members by the time Richard Sheppard died on 31st October 1937.

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