Antique Dealers: the British Antique Trade in the 20th Century

William Ridler was born in Birmingham and first worked at the Bourneville chocolate factory at the age of 14.  He won a scholarship to Ruskin College, Oxford to read philosophy, before opening an antique shop in Oxford by the early 1960s.  He was also the author of 'The Knocker' (1966) a novel about the antique trade.