Name George 1st | Died December 5, 1934 | |
Books Some Things that Matter, The Riddell Diaries, 1908-1923 | ||
George Allardice Riddell, 1st Baron Riddell (25 May 1865 – 5 December 1934), known as Sir George Riddell, Bt, between 1918 and 1920, was a British solicitor, newspaper proprietor and public servant.
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Background and education
Riddell was born in Brixton Heath, London, the son of James Riddell, a photographer, and Isabel (née Young). His education was funded by one of his mother's five sisters and her husband. He became a clerk in a solicitor's office, and qualified as a solicitor himself in 1888, being placed first in all of England in his final exams.
Career
After making a fortune Riddell left the law and went into the newspaper business. By 1903 he was managing director of the News of the World and also owned other newspapers. A close friend and ally of David Lloyd George, he was knighted in 1909, on the recommendation of H. H. Asquith. During the First World War, he liaised between the government and the press and represented the British press barons at the Paris Peace Conference and later peace conferences. For these services he was created a Baronet, of Walton Heath in the County of Surrey, in 1918 and raised to the peerage as Baron Riddell, of Walton Heath in the County of Surrey, in the 1920 New Year Honours. He appointment almost foundered—he had been secretly divorced in 1900 and that would have disqualified him in the king's view.
He was the author of several books, among them Some Things that Matter (1922), Lord Riddell's War Diary, 1914–18, and Lord Riddell's Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After. He was not impressed by his contemporary, Winston Churchill.
Ridell was a close confidant and financial angel of David Lloyd George from 1908 to 1922, and Riddell's highly perceptive diary have made him, "Lloyd George's Boswell." During Lloyd George's first year as prime minister, in summer 1917, Riddell assessed his personality:
His energy, capacity for work, and power of recuperation are remarkable. He has an extraordinary memory, imagination, and the art of getting at the root of a matter....He is not afraid of responsibility, and has no respect for tradition or convention. He is always ready to examine, scrap or revise established theories and practices. These qualities give him unlimited confidence in himself.... He is one of the craftiest of men, and his extraordinary charm of manner not only wins him friends, but does much to soften the asperities of his opponents and enemies. He is full of humour and a born actor....He has an instinctive power of divining the thoughts and intentions of people with whom he is conversing. His chief defects are: (1) Lack of appreciation of existing institutions, organisations, and stolid, dull people...their ways are not his ways and their methods are not his methods. (2) Fondness for a grandiose scheme in preference to an attempt to improve existing machinery. (3) Disregard of difficulties in carrying out big projects...he is not a man of detail.Personal life
Riddell married his cousin Annie, daughter of David William Allardice, in 1900. They had no children. He died in December 1934, aged 69, when the baronetcy and barony became extinct.