Matthew Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley

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Viscount Ridley in the robes of a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter

Matthew White Ridley, 4th Viscount Ridley, KG, GCVO, TD (born 29 July 1925) is a British nobleman, who served for approximately a decade as Lord Steward of the Household.

The Honourable Matthew Ridley, as he was styled from birth, was educated at Eton College before joining the Coldstream Guards and serving in Normandy and Germany in 1944-45. Later he joined the Territorial Army, reaching the rank of brevet colonel in the Northumberland Hussars (he would become honorary colonel of that unit in 1979). In 1948 he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford before serving as an aide-de-camp for the Governor of Kenya. He was chairman of Northumberland County Council from 1967 to 1979. He chaired several companies and societies, before serving as Chancellor of the University of Newcastle from 1988 to 1999, Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland from 1984 to 2000 and Lord Steward of the Household from 1989 to 2001. He was succeeded by James Hamilton, 5th Duke of Abercorn as Lord Steward in 2001. He succeeded his father as Viscount Ridley in 1964, and married Lady Anne Katharine Gabrielle Lumley (1928–2006), daughter of the 11th Earl of Scarbrough, in 1953.

His younger brother Nicholas Ridley was a prominent Conservative Party politician who served as a government minister for nearly all of Margaret Thatcher's years as Prime Minister.^[1] His son and heir is Matt Ridley the acclaimed science writer, and latterly chairman of Northern Rock.

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