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George Allardice Riddell Riddell

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"GEORGE ALLARDICE RIDDELL RIDDELL, 1ST Baron (1865-), British newspaper proprietor, was born in London May 25 1865 and educated privately. He became a solicitor in 1888 and settled in practice at Cardiff. There he acquired an interest in the Western Mail, and he eventually turned his energies mainly to newspaper management. He went to London and obtained control over the Sunday paper, the News of the World, which he developed on popular lines, so that it obtained a huge circulation during the first decade of the 20th century and made its proprietor a very wealthy man. He gradually extended his newspaper connexions, becoming a director also of George Newnes Ltd., Country Life Ltd., and C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., etc. By the year 5909, when he received a knighthood, he had become one of the most influential personalities in the London press, and he took an active part in giving a more efficient organization to various forms of press work, by way of collective action between proprietors themselves and their organs. He was a prominent member of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association at the outbreak of the World War, and owing to his intimate relations with Mr. Lloyd George he gradually became the principal liaison between the Press and the Government so far as ail matters of publicity were concerned. In this capacity he represented the British Press at the Peace Conference in 1919 and at all the important Allied conferences subsequently. He was created a baronet in 1918, and raised to the peerage as Baron Riddell of Walton Heath in 1920.