Ronald Ridout
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Ronald Joseph Ridout (23 July 1916 – 5 December 1994)''Contemporary Authors Online'' (2003) Detroit, Gale was a prolific English writer of school textbooks. His textbooks include the hugely successful series ''English Today''.


Biography

Ronald Ridout was born in
Farnham Farnham is a market town and civil parish in Surrey, England, around southwest of London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, close to the county border with Hampshire. The town is on the north branch of the River Wey, a tributary of the ...
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Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...
, on 23 July 1916. He was the son of Gilbert Harry Ridout, a schoolmaster, and Ethel Mary ''née'' Phillips. He married Betty Elsie Dolley on 10 February 1940, and had three children, Jessica, Simon and Veronica. He worked as a bank clerk at the
National Provincial Bank National Provincial Bank was a retail bank which operated in England and Wales. It was created in 1833 as National Provincial Bank of England, and expanded largely by taking over a number of other banks. Following the transformative acquisitio ...
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Alton, Hampshire Alton ( ) is a market town and civil parish in East Hampshire, England, near the source of the northern branch of the River Wey. It had a population of 19,425 at the 2021 census. Alton was recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086 as ''Aoltone' ...
, from 1933 to 1935 and received his B.A. degree with honours from Oxford University in 1939. From 1939 to 1950 he worked as a teacher at schools in
Bolton Bolton ( , locally ) is a town in Greater Manchester in England. In the foothills of the West Pennine Moors, Bolton is between Manchester, Blackburn, Wigan, Bury, Greater Manchester, Bury and Salford. It is surrounded by several towns and vill ...
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Luton Luton () is a town and borough in Bedfordshire, England. The borough had a population of 225,262 at the 2021 census. Luton is on the River Lea, about north-west of London. The town's foundation dates to the sixth century as a Saxon settleme ...
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Nuneaton Nuneaton ( ) is a market town in Warwickshire, England, close to the county border with Leicestershire to the north-east.OS Explorer Map 232 : Nuneaton & Tamworth: (1:25 000) : Nuneaton's population at the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 censu ...
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Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. Most of Portsmouth is located on Portsea Island, off the south coast of England in the Solent, making Portsmouth the only city in En ...
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Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...
and
Woking Woking ( ) is a town and borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in north-west Surrey, England, around from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as ''Wochinges'', and its name probably derives from that of a Anglo-Saxon settleme ...
. He was dissatisfied with the available material for the teaching of English at the time that he started his teaching career, and as a result developed the ''English Today'' series of textbooks in the 1940s. He worked at Ginn & Co. Ltd., London, the publishers of ''English Today'', from 1946 to 1950, as a publisher's representative. The enormous success of the ''English Today'' books led to him leaving the classroom in 1950 to devote his time to writing. From 1950 until his death, he worked exclusively as a writer. Ridout collaborated with Phyllis Flowerdew on a number of primary school readers during the 1960s for the publishers Oliver and Boyd. He died in
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
on 5 December 1994. So prolific was his output and huge his sales, exceeding seventy million, that he earned a place in ''The
Guinness Book of World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listi ...
''. His daughter Jessica lives in
Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...
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Quotations

"What we must do is to steer between these two extremes and develop a way of speaking that most effectively expresses what we want to say. We want a speech that will do its job well. Everything that does its job well has a beauty of its own. Hence we talk of a beautiful runner, a beautiful dancer, a beautiful engine. They all have functional beauty, the beauty of functioning perfectly, the beauty of being perfectly suited to the job they have to do. So with speech: we want an instrument that is beautiful, not because it puts on decorative airs, but because it does its work beautifully, perfectly."
From ''English Today'', Ronald Ridout, Ginn & Company, 1947, pp. 111–112


Bibliography

(selected bibliography) ''A. to Z. of English'', (with Michael Tristram, Neil Straker and Timothy Jaques), Collins -
''Better English'' (1961) Ginn & Company, (reprinted 2000 by Heinemann )
''Book for Me to Read'' (with Ruth Ainsworth), Series, Purnell Bancroft
''Children's Dictionary'' (1983) Collins
''English Now'', Books 1 - 5, Ginn & Company
''English Today'', Books 1 - 5 (1947), Ginn & Company
''English Workbooks'', Books 1 - 8, Ginn & Company
''English Workbooks for the Caribbean'', Books 1 - 8, (1968) Ginn & Company
''Evans Graded Verse'' (with Michael Knight) (1978), Evans Bros.
''Facts of English'' (with Clifford Witting) (1973)
Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd in the United Kingdom and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC in the United States) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be on ...

''Getting on with Dividing'' (with Michael Holt and Jon Miller) (1986) Collins
''Getting on with Mathematics'' (with Michael Holt and Jon Miller) (1986) Collins
''Getting on with Multiplying'' (with Michael Holt and Jon Miller) (1986), Collins
''Getting on with Spelling'', Series, (with Michael Holt and Leon Baxter), (1986), Collins
''The Life Cycle of Cats'' (with Michael Holt), illustrated by Tony Payne. Grosset & Dunlap, (1974)
''The Macmillan Dictionary of English Proverbs Explained'' (with Clifford Witting),
Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd in the United Kingdom and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC in the United States) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be on ...

''Now I Can Spell'' (with Michael Holt) (1987) Collins
''Now I Can Take Away'' (1985), Collins
''Now I Can Write'', Series, (with Michael Holt) (1987), Collins
''Picture Words'' (1975), Collins
''Ridout pocket spelling dictionary'' (1979) Ginn & Company
''Self Help English'',
Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd in the United Kingdom and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC in the United States) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be on ...
-
''Word Perfect'' (with
George Adamson George Alexander Graham Adamson MBE (3 February 1906 – 20 August 1989), also known as the ''Baba ya Simba'' ("Father of Lions" in Swahili), was a British wildlife conservationist and author based in Kenya. His wife Joy Adamson related in h ...
), Books 1 - 8, (1957–60) Ginn & Company
''Write in English'', Books 1 - 8, (1974) Ginn & Company


References


External links


Ronald Ridout at ISBNdb
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ridout, Ronald British textbook writers 1916 births 1994 deaths Booker authors' division People from Farnham Alumni of the University of Oxford