Dick Strawbridge

Dick Strawbridge is an engineer, former British Army lieutenant colonel, television presenter, and writer known for ambitious practical projects. Born in Burma and raised in Northern Ireland, he brought military engineering experience to programs about sustainability, invention, and restoration. A Year at the Chateau, written with his wife Angel Strawbridge, recounts their first year at Château de la Motte-Husson in France. The couple moved from an East London flat into a nineteenth-century property with 45 rooms, seven outbuildings, 12 acres, and a moat, then worked toward making it habitable for their family, wedding, and first Christmas there. The 2020 Seven Dials memoir accompanied the Channel 4 series Escape to the Chateau. Dick's technical problem-solving and Angel's design and hospitality work receive equal narrative weight, while their children Arthur and Dorothy give the restoration a family scale. A Year at the Chateau records tasks omitted from television and treats renovation as seasonal domestic labor, not a single dramatic transformation.