Richard Riddell

Richard John Riddell was born in Darlington, Co Durham, in 1946 and was educated at the town's Queen Elizabeth Grammar School from where, at the University of Wales, Lampeter, he studied French, with English and Philosophy. He studied Art Education at Durham University before reading History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in the University of London during which he spent some time at the British School at Rome. He was for a number of years Head of Art at the Arts Educational School, Tring Park, before obtaining a Postgraduate Diploma in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at Manchester University. Following a brief curatorial career in the Decorative Arts at the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery he became an advisor to UNESCO in Paris and the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. He was a pioneer in the MA(RCA) in the History of Design jointly at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum on the early career and publications of C. H. Tatham, in which he gained a distinction in Cultural History and the Thomson Award, and subsequently became a lecturer and consultant at the V&A. Following research at Wolfson College, Oxford he was awarded a DPhil in the History of Art and Architecture for his study of the entrance-portico in the architecture of Great Britain. He has for many years been a tutor in History and History of Art for the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education (including Summer Schools, notably with the University of Western Australia, and the Smithsonian Seminar), as well as a lecturer for Swan Hellenic Art Treasures Tours in France, Spain and Italy. He was for a while Director of Studies of the Inchbald School of Design, London. He has published widely in art, design and architectural history – including numerous articles for Apollo magazine (1986), the Georgian Group Symposium (1988), The Dictionary of Art (1996) and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) and his recent book 'Temple Beauties' (2011). He has been a visiting professor at Beloit College, Wisconsin, the University of Austin, Texas and Florida State University, Tallahassee and Panama City, and has lectured widely elsewhere in the United States on cultural history under the auspices of the English-Speaking Union. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and family and is currently engaged on a history of Englishness.