Dr Richard Moore is a historian working mostly on the history of Britain’s nuclear weapons programme, although his research interests include wider naval and aerospace history, civil nuclear history and nuclear proliferation.

He is a public servant with 30 years’ experience in defence and security. Before becoming a visitor at the Centre for Science & Security Studies (CSSS) in 2011, he held a similar position at the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies at Southampton.

He has MA and MPhil degrees from Cambridge and his PhD thesis, working for Eric Grove at Hull University, was on the Royal Navy and nuclear weapons.

He has been involved for many years organising the nuclear history conferences held from time to time at Charterhouse School, which bring together veterans of Britain’s nuclear programmes, both civil and military, with academics and other researchers for informal discussions and exchange of ideas.

Research

• The balance of domestic and international political, military, and technological drivers behind nuclear programmes
• Relation of civil and military nuclear programmes
• Nuclear delivery systems
• 20th century naval history
• Project and programme management, with special reference to nuclear programmes

Publications

Books

• Nuclear illusion, nuclear reality: Britain, the United States and nuclear weapons 1958-64 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
• The Royal Navy and nuclear weapons (Frank Cass 2001).

Book chapters

• ‘Sir James Chadwick’ and ‘Sir Joseph Rotblat’, in Rizwan Ali and Brye-Ann Steeves, eds., Nobel laureates of Los Alamos: the Manhattan Project era (Texas A&M University Press 2023).

Articles (selected)

• (with Eric Brown) ‘Woolwich, Bruceton, Los Alamos: Munroe jets and the Trinity gadget’, Nuclear Technology 207/S1 (2021), pp.S222-30.
• ‘“We are a modern Navy” – abolishing the Royal Navy’s rum ration’, The Mariner’s Mirror 103/1 (2017), 67-79.
• ‘Aircraft procurement under Labour 1964-70: some myths’, RAF Historical Society Journal 59 (2017), 39-57.
• ‘A proliferation of Royal Air Forces: bombers and bombs down under, 1956-63’, Nonproliferation Review 21/2 (2014), 169-78.
• ‘Bad strategy and bomber dreams: a new view of the Blue Streak cancellation’, Contemporary British History 27/2 (2013), 145-66.