Lord Riddell found his way rather cwiously into journalism, and
into rather curious regiors of it—for the proprietorship of the News of the World certainly merits that description. He began life as a solicitor and got to Fleet Street through his legal connexion with the Western Mail. What made him known to the public generally was his appointment as liaison officer between the Press and the British Delegation at the Peace Conference and all the subsequent series of such gatherings, including the Washington Conference, where so approachable and unconventional a peer was a per- petual delight to American journalists. I remembersitting with him in the lounge of the Hotel Lafayette there one Sunday evening when be was just starting off to occupy a Presbyterian pulpit—in many ways an odd rote for him. He was a strange mixture—a particularly shrewd man of the world, but always ready to do all sorts of kindnesses, usually by stealth, and a surprising number of- people, I am sure, will mourn his death. His three volumes of extracts from his diaries are a real contribution to the history of the twenty years from 1908 onwards, for he was in perpetual contact with Mr. Lloyd George, and Mr. Lloyd George, till 1923 at any rate, was always at the heart of the political life of the country. Riddell had no children and it was commonly understood that his will would contain some bequests of considerable public interest.
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