Jasper Godwin Ridley,

FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

(25 May 1920 – 1 July 2004) was a British writer, known for historical biographies. He received the 1970

James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, U ...

for his biography of '' Lord Palmerston''. Born in West Hoathly, Sussex, he was educated at Felcourt School, Magdalen College, Oxford, and the Sorbonne. He trained and practised as a barrister, being called to the Bar by the

Inner Temple The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and W ...

in 1945, before starting to write. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, he served with an air defence unit and manned an anti-aircraft battery at Portsmouth, where the man next to him was killed by shrapnel. He served on St Pancras Borough Council from 1945 to 1949, and stood, unsuccessfully, as Labour Party candidate for Winchester in 1955 general election. He married, in 1949, Vera Pollak, who died in 2002 and with whom he had two sons and a daughter.

Works

*''The Tate Gallery's Wartime Acquisitions'' (1942) *''The Law of the Carriage of Goods by Land, Sea and Air'' (1957) *''Nicholas Ridley'' (1957) *''Thomas Cranmer'' (1962) *''John Knox'' (1968) *''Lord Palmerston'' (1970) *''Garibaldi'' (1974) *''The Roundheads'' (1976) *''Napoleon III and Eugénie'' (1979) *''The History of England'' (1981) *''Statesman and Saint: Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, and the Politics of Henry VIII'' (1982) *''Life and Times of Mary Tudor'' (1973) *''Henry VIII the Politics of Tyranny'' (1984) *''The Tudor Age'' (1988) *''The Love Letters of Henry VIII'' (1988) editor *''Elizabeth I: the Shrewdness of Virtue'' (1988) *''Maximilian & Juarez'' (1992) *''Tito'' (1994) *''A History of the Carpenters' Company'' (1995) *''Mussolini'' (1997) *''The Freemasons: A History of the World's Most Powerful Secret Society'' (1999) *''The Houses of Hanover and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha: A Royal History of England'' (2000) with John Clarke *''Bloody Mary's Martyrs: The Story of England’s Terror'' (2001) *''A Brief History of The Tudor Age'' (2002)

External links

"Jasper Ridley"
Fellows Remembered, The Royal Society of Literature

in the ''Daily Telegraph'', 8 July 2004 * http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext17/Mildiscp.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Ridley, Jasper 1920 births 2004 deaths Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford British biographers British historians Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates University of Paris alumni James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients 20th-century biographers Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature British expatriates in France Members of the Inner Temple Labour Party (UK) councillors