[ilds] Vivian Ridler (1913-2009)

[Charles Sligh]

Lest we forget. . . .

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Vivian Ridler, CBE, printer and typographer, was born on October 2, 
1913. He died on January 11, 2009, aged 95
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 From The Times
January 14, 2009
Vivian Ridler: printer and typographer*

Vivian Ridler brought to the post of Printer to Oxford University a 
combination of technical knowledge, design ability and managerial 
competence unique in the long traditions of university printing. He, 
more than any other, fulfilled Archbishop Laud’s vision of the 
University’s Printing House being led by an architypographus (as 
Chancellor of Oxford, Laud founded the Press in 1633).

Vivian Hughes Ridler was born in 1913 in Cardiff, but his family moved 
to Bristol in 1918 when his father became superintendent of Avonmouth 
Docks. He was brought up there and attended Bristol Grammar School, 
developing a precocious interest in printing with David Bland (who later 
became production director at Faber & Faber).

Together, as a hobby, Ridler and Bland started printing the parish 
magazine, and then founded the Perpetua Press, named after Eric Gill’s 
typeface. They were soon undertaking commissions for ephemera for the 
bookseller and radio producer Douglas Cleverdon, but also for sausage 
labels. In 1935 their Fifteen Old Nursery Rhymes, illustrated by Biddy 
Darlow, was chosen as one of the 50 best books of the year — a 
remarkable achievement for such young men. With typical modesty Ridler 
later said that in its first five years Perpetua “produced several 
interesting books and a wallpaper which never reached a wall”.

Meanwhile, he had been apprenticed in 1931 to the company of E. S. & A. 
Robinson, the packaging printer, but was tempted away to Oxford to be 
assistant to John Johnson, then the University Printer, who recognised 
his developing talent as a typographer. Unfortunately, Johnson, though 
brilliant, was a difficult and eccentric employer. Relations between the 
two men were not improved when in 1938 Ridler was married to Anne 
Bradby, secretary to T. S. Eliot at Faber, and niece of Oxford’s London 
publisher, Humphrey Milford, whom Johnson considered something of a rival.

Accordingly, Ridler went to manage the Bunhill Press for the Voltaire 
scholar Theodore Basterman. Ridler then served with the RAF in West 
Africa and Germany, becoming a squadron leader. On demobilisation he 
worked as a freelance designer, notably for the Cresset Press, Lund 
Humphries and Faber (for which he designed two children’s alphabets in 
1941). He also redesigned The Burlington Magazine and lectured at the 
Royal College of Art.

He subsequently became an examiner in typographic design for the City & 
Guilds of London Institute, and chaired the printing advisory committee 
at the College of Art and Technology, now Oxford Brookes University.

Charles Batey succeeded Johnson as Oxford’s Printer in 1946, and he 
persuaded Ridler to return to help to reorganise the Press, after its 
wartime security work, for new challenges of educational printing. One 
of Ridler’s first responsibilities was to increase productivity in a 
traditional house based on the highest standards. Simultaneously, he saw 
the potential of litho printing, and he was the first British printer to 
use the fine screens for litho reproduction that had been developed in 
America during the Second World War. He was responsible for the 1951 
exhibition Printing at Oxford since 1478.

He became assistant printer in 1949, and succeeded Batey in 1958. His 
technical competence, impeccable typography and witty turn of phrase, 
together with a knack of losing his temper only on purpose, had earned 
everyone’s respect. With a staff of 700, he kept a close eye on the 
people as well as the books. Usually at his desk by 7.30am, he dealt 
with much of the post personally, made tours of the factory and was 
available to staff and customers.

His typography, in the tradition of the typographer and historian 
Stanley Morison, showed a mastery of Oxford’s unrivalled resources, and 
he brought a puckish wit to his work. It was Ridler who designed 
Morison’s great book on John Fell, the University Press, and the Fell 
Types. This was a large 275-page folio about 17th-century typography 
that Ridler agreed to have set at the press in the 17thcentury types 
themselves, “for the greater honour of Fell and the greater pleasure of 
the reader”. This meant setting the entire book by hand — a more 
extensive use of the types than any before in their long history — which 
produced a book of almost unrivalled typographical beauty and a 
permanent glory of the Press. As Morison puts it in his preface, Ridler 
also “lighted upon” a neglected portrait of Fell by John Lely, found in 
Bristol, which was handsomely reproduced (for the first time) as the 
frontispiece.

The Rotz Atlas facsimile for Lord Eccles was one of many fine Roxburghe 
Club volumes he also printed. The Great Tournament Roll of the College 
of Arms, completed in 1968, was Oxford’s last use of collotype. The gold 
was not simulated: it was gold leaf laid by hand.

However, the main work at Walton Street was the production of academic 
reference books, schoolbooks and the Bible. Standards were impeccable in 
those days, with the Printer responsible for layout, copy preparation 
and proofreading. The printing house record of 15 books in the National 
Book League annual book production awards is perhaps untouchable. Ridler 
also designed the Coronation Bible on which the Queen swore her Oath in 
1953.

Mass production fascinated Ridler, whether it was popular dictionaries, 
Bibles for the British and Foreign Bible Society, or the launch of The 
New English Bible. He oversaw the change from Monotype hot-metal setting 
to filmsetting, from letterpress to offset litho, and from sheetfed 
printing to web offset.

To accommodate all the new machinery — which was producing ever-larger 
quantities of books — new factory space was needed. Successive 
secretaries to the delegates of the Press wisely involved Ridler in 
appointing architects to work in Walton Street. This led to the arrival 
of John Fryman. His 100,000 sq ft extension to the printing factory in 
1968 was of the greatest integrity, and released a great deal of space 
around the quad for publishing offices. Fryman said he had never been 
given a clearer brief than Ridler’s, nor had a more constructive and 
inspiring client.

Ridler’s retirement in 1978, the quincentenary year of Oxford printing 
(which was brilliantly marked, partly through his work) coincided with 
that of the academic publisher, Dan Davin. The period marked the Press 
as a whole change from being, in military terms, a crack regiment, to 
being the equivalent of a competent corps. Ridler left the Printing 
House profitable but on too narrow a base. He had hinted at a step 
towards more integration with publishing, as happened successfully at 
Cambridge, ensuring the survival of the printing house there, but this 
initiative failed at Oxford.

The closure of the factory in 1989 — leaving the great publishing house 
to contract out all of its printing — came as a sad blow to Ridler in 
his retirement, but he was realistic about the issues. Oxford was by the 
1980s a worldwide publisher with astonishingly varied printing needs, 
and able to resource these worldwide.

But the closure of the printing business after 400 years should not 
detract from Ridler’s achievements. A former apprentice had become one 
of the leading British master printers of the century.

Despite a hectic working life, Ridler found time for trade associations, 
being an outstanding president of the British Federation of Master 
Printers, 1968-69. He was the only university printer to hold this post, 
and it was unusual for it to be held by a former trade unionist. He was 
president of the Double Crown Club in 1963. St Edmund Hall elected him a 
Fellow in 1966. He was appointed CBE in 1971.

He revived the Perpetua Press imprint in his retirement, partly to print 
his wife’s poetry. Theirs was a fine pairing of literary, musical, 
devotional and practical interests. (It surprised some people to realise 
that, despite their many talents, neither husband nor wife had taken an 
undergraduate degree.) Perhaps the outstanding Perpetua book was an 
edition of the 17th-century Poems of William Austin (1983), which had 
been identified and edited by Anne, and were finely printed by Vivian. 
There was also a handsome book of the Oxford college graces, and in 1994 
the press published a volume of verses by Rowan Williams, then the 
Bishop of Monmouth. The last book published by the Perpetua Press was 
Anne Ridler’s Memoirs (2004).

An exhibition of Ridler’s work was mounted on his retirement in the 
Divinity School at the Bodleian Library. The Ruskin School of Art 
mounted another to mark his 80th birthday in 1993.

In December 2008 an exhibition was held in the Bodleian of Christmas 
cards he had received down the years to honour his 96th Christmas, and 
the library is establishing an archive called Poet and Printer in honour 
of Anne and Vivian Ridler.

Anne Ridler died in 2001. Ridler is survived by their two sons and two 
daughters.

Vivian Ridler, CBE, printer and typographer, was born on October 2, 
1913. He died on January 11, 2009, aged 95



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Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
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