Adam Ridley

Sir Adam Nicholas Ridley (born 14 May 1942) is a British economist, civil servant, and banker.

After working at the Foreign Office and the Department of Economic Affairs, he was Director of the Conservative Research Department. With Chris Patten he wrote the Conservative election manifesto of 1979 and after the election was a Special Advisor to the Chancellors of the Exchequer until 1984. He later served as a director of Hambros Bank, of Morgan Stanley, and of Equitas insurance companies.

Early life and background The son of Jasper Maurice Alexander Ridley (1913–1943), by his marriage to Helen Laura Cressida Bonham-Carter, a daughter of Sir Maurice Bonham-Carter and Violet Asquith (herself a daughter of the British prime minister H. H. Asquith), Ridley lost his father during the Second World War. His grandfather, Sir Jasper Nicholas Ridley (1887–1951), was the younger son of Matthew White Ridley, 1st Viscount Ridley, Home Secretary in Lord Salisbury's government from 1895 to 1900, while his paternal grandmother was Countess Nathalie von Benckendorff, a daughter of Count Alexander von Benckendorff, Russian Ambassador to the Court of St James's between 1903 and 1917.

Ridley was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took first class honours in philosophy, politics and economics in 1965.

He is a first cousin of the actress Helena Bonham Carter and a more distant cousin of the Conservative cabinet minister Nicholas Ridley and the historian Jane Ridley. In the summer of 1978, in the expectation of a general election later that year, a Conservative Party election manifesto was drafted by Ridley and Patten and edited by Angus Maude. In 1979, Ridley became Director of the Conservative Research Department. Following the Conservative victory in the general election of 1979, he was briefly at 10 Downing Street, before returning to the Treasury as a Special Advisor to Sir Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson as Chancellors of the Exchequer between 1979 and 1984. Ridley played a leading part in forming the new government's policy favouring privatisation.

Ridley's final post in the world of government was as advisor to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for part of 1985.

He served on the National Lottery Charities Board from 1994 to 2000, most of that time as its Deputy chairman, and since 2003 has been a member of the Council of the British School at Athens. In 1981, he married secondly Margaret Anne Passmore, and they have three sons. He is a member of the Garrick Club and the Political Economy Club.