Professor Jane Ridley

Jane Ridley is a historian, biographer, broadcaster, and Professor of Modern History at the University of Buckingham. She has been in charge of the University's Master of Arts course in Biography since establishing it in 1996. This was the first postgraduate course of its kind. She is the current Chairman of the Biographers’ Club.

Jane Ridley won the Duff Cooper Prize in 2002 for The Architect and his Wife, a biography of her great-grandfather Edwin Lutyens. Other books include: The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his Wife Lady Emily, ed. with Clayre Percy, Fox Hunting: A History, The Letters of Arthur Balfour and Lady Elcho, ed. with Clayre Percy, and The Young Disraeli. She wrote an acclaimed biography of Bertie: A life of Edward VII, and this was followed by Queen Victoria: Queen, Empress, Matriarch for the Penguin Monarchs series. In 2021 she published a major new biography, George V: Never a Dull Moment.

She is currently working on a study of the Queen. She has appeared in tv documentaries about royal history, and she reviews in publications such as the Spectator and the Telegraph.