Julian Ridsdale

Who was Julian Ridsdale?

Sir Julian Errington Ridsdale, CBE was a British National Liberal and later Conservative Party politician and long-serving Member of Parliament for the constituency of Harwich in Essex. He took a particular interest in Japan.

The son of a stockbroker and nephew both of former Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Liberal MP Sir Aurelian Ridsdale, he was educated at Tonbridge School and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. After being commissiined as an officer in the Royal Norfolk Regiment, he studied Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies and during the war was a military intelligence officer specialising in Japan, rising to the rank of Major.

After the war, he ran a fruit farm in Sussex.

His wife Victoire Evelyn Patricia "Paddy" Bennett, whom he married in 1942, was then secretary to the writer Ian Fleming. She is reported to have been a model for the character Miss Moneypenny, secretary to James Bond. She was her husband's secretary and chairman of the Conservative MPs' Wives, and was awarded the DBE in 1991.