Ridley, Jasper (Godwin) 1920-2004

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RIDLEY, Jasper (Godwin) 1920-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 25, 1920, in West Hoathly, Sussex, England; died July 1, 2004. Attorney and author. Ridley was best known as an author of histories and biography. After attending the Sorbonne and Magdalen College, Oxford, in the late 1930s, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery during World War II. After the war, he was called to the Bar in 1946 and practiced law until 1954, when he became a full-time writer. As an author of histories and biographies, Ridley lay somewhere between the pure academic and the popularizer: his work was more meticulously researched than the average popular history but still more suited to general audiences than to scholars. Among his many biographies are Lord Palmerston (1970), for which he received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Garibaldi (1974), Henry VIII (1984), Tito: A Biography (1994), and Mussolini: A Biography (1998); his histories include the publications History of England (1981), The Tudor Age (1988), and Secret Societies (2003).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Daily Telegraph (London, England), July 8, 2004.

Times (London, England), July 7, 2004, p. 29.