[3] Richard John Trowbridge was born on 21 January 1920 to a farming family at Andover in the county of Hampshire, England.

At the end of hostilities, he was stationed in Singapore for a number of years where he was promoted to commander in 1953, and where he met and married Anne Perceval (1920–2013), on 26 February 1955.

[2] The Premier of Western Australia, Sir Charles Court, in 1975 sought to revive the practice of appointment of British-born governors for Western Australia, contrary to the advice of Lord Goronwy-Roberts, British Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, who supported the newly established custom that Australian state governors should be Australian-born.

An initial compromise was the appointment of Sir Wallace Kyle, a retired Royal Air Force officer who, although totally Anglicised, was Kalgoorlie-born.

His life was overshadowed by exposure to asbestos which was being removed from Britannia during a long refit which he supervised, almost certainly leading to his death from lung cancer.