Richard Reid Ingrams (born 19 August 1937) is an English journalist, a co-founder and second editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, and founding editor of The Oldie magazine. He left the latter job at the end of May 2014.
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Early life and education
Ingrams's parents, who had three other sons including the banker and opera impresario Leonard Ingrams, were Leonard St Clair Ingrams (1900–1953), an investment banker from a clergy family who worked as a government official in propaganda, economic warfare and the secret services during World War II, and Victoria, the daughter of Sir James Reid, private physician to Queen Victoria. Through his maternal grandmother and her ties to the Baring family, Ingrams is a direct descendant of the 19th-century prime minister Charles Grey.
Ingrams was educated at the independent preparatory school West Downs in Winchester, Hampshire, followed by Shrewsbury School, where he met Willie Rushton and edited the school magazine. Before attending Oxford, he did his National Service in the Royal Army Educational Corps; he served in the army ranks after failing his interview for officer training, something which was unusual for someone from his background at the time. At University College, Oxford, where he read Classics, he shared tutorials with Robin Butler, later cabinet secretary and sometimes referred to as a "pillar of the Establishment". Ingrams also met Paul Foot, another former Shrewsbury pupil, not yet the left-wing radical he became, who became a lifelong friend and whose biography Ingrams wrote after Foot's death.