Vivian Hughes Ridler, CBE (1913–2009), was a British printer, typographer, and scholar. He established his Perpetua Press as a teenager; with his friend David Bland he printed Fifteen Old Nursery Rhymes, which in the mid-1930s was chosen as one of the 50 best books of the year. He worked for Oxford University Press for a short while, then left OUP to establish another press. After serving in the Second World War, he went back to OUP where he eventually succeeded Charles Batey in 1958 to become the Printer to the University of Oxford. When Ridler retired from OUP in 1978 he revived the Perpetua Press imprint, publishing cards and some books. He was a founder of the Institute of Printing, an examiner in typographic design for the City and Guilds of London Institute, was elected President of the British Federation of Master Printers, and served as president of the British Printing Industries Federation. In 1970 Ridler was made a CBE. In Oxford, he was invited to become a fellow of St Edmund Hall.

In 1938 he married Anne Bradby, who was T.S. Eliot’s assistant at Faber & Faber; Anne Ridler was a noted poet, librettist, and editor. The Ridlers had four children. Ridler died on January 11, 2009.

The Double Crown Club, a dinner club and society of printers, publishers, book designers, and artists, was founded in 1924 to promote the appreciation of good printing and the arts of the book. The club’s name refers to a size of paper. With a select, invitation-only membership, club members meet four to six times per year for dinner and drinks and talk. For each dinner a theme is chosen and presented by a club member or a guest speaker; an artist or designer is invited to design the menu and invitation. Vivian Ridler was elected to the Double Crown Club in 1943; in 1963 he served as its president. He took pride in his Double Crown Club collection, endeavoring to acquire ephemera from dinners he was absent from and seeking out copies where his own had condition problems.