Vivian Ridler

Vivian Ridler CBE (born 1913) was born in Cardiff and worked as Printer to the University at Oxford University Press from 1958 to 1978. Educated at Bristol Grammar School, he became interested in typography, and with the help of a friend bought a small Adana printing press for home use. Ridler got to know John Johnson, the Printer to the University, and in 1936 came to Oxford to help the Assistant Printer, Charles Batey. In the late 1930s Ridler moved away from Oxford, establishing the Bunhill Press in London. He served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

After the war, Ridler became the first tutor in typography at the Royal College of Art and typographer to Lund Humphries & Co. in Bradford, before returning to Oxford University Press as Works Manager in 1948. He was appointed Assistant Printer in 1950.

Ridler was widely known in printing beyond Oxford. He was a founder of the Institute of Printing, an examiner in typographic design for the City and Guilds of London Institute and was elected president of the British Federation of Master Printers in 1968. He was made a CBE in 1970. In 1938 he married the writer Anne Bradby, who worked as secretary to T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber. The Ridlers had four children before Anne's death in 2001.

References

*Mick Belson, "On the Press" (Robert Boyd Publications, 2003), pp. 90-92.
*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for [http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/101076404/ Anne Ridler] .