At Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1961 to 1964, where he was president of the Junior Common Room and of the Fleming Society, he received an MA in Geography and at Harvard Business School, 1964-66 an MBA.

[2] At Oxford he met Lesley Ann Wells who was reading Modern History at St Hugh's College and they married in August 1964 before going to America.

Graduating from Harvard Business School, Wardle worked in New York, 1966–69, as assistant to the president of American Express Company; in the City of London, 1969–71, as a corporate finance executive at Morgan Grenfell and 1971–74, as managing director of Robert Fraser & Partners; in the West Midlands, 1974–83, as managing director and from 1977 executive chairman of Benjamin Priest Group plc.

In April 2000, after he had said he would be leaving Parliament the following year, he joined the board of Harrods Ltd as a non-executive director with the prior consent of the leader of the Conservative Party.

After leaving Parliament in 2001, Wardle's role at Harrods was upgraded to external affairs director in which capacity he met the prime minister of Thailand in Bangkok six times, the presidents of Pakistan and Chad and the King of Jordan.

Wardle took the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill through its Commons stages; reviewed entry clearance procedures in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Hong Kong; and deputised for the Home Secretary at EU Councils of Interior and Justice Ministers in Copenhagen, Athens, Thessaloniki, Brussels and Luxembourg.

In 1995, after private correspondence and personal exchanges with Prime Minister John Major over fifteen months, Wardle resigned from the Government to speak independently on the need to preserve British border controls within the framework of the European Treaty.

[7] With a member of the Defence Select Committee he attended a Moscow conference with senior Russian military personnel to discuss budgetary control of military field operations; he was part of a Parliamentary delegation to the US Senate, the IMF and the Federal Reserve; spoke for the Conservative Party in the Czech Republic; visited Taipei as a guest of the Taiwanese Government; was an Evelyn Wrench Fellowship speaker for the English Speaking Union in the US; and gave lectures to the Civil Service College.

In April 2000, however, he informed his association executive that with great personal regret he and his wife had changed their minds about continuing for another Parliament because he needed to revert to his business career to make long-term financial provision after serious illness in their family.

Without the Conservative whip[8] at the close of his 18-year Parliamentary career for persisting with questions about Greg Barker’s Russian activities, after the dissolution of Parliament Wardle was approached by Nigel Farage with whom he had no previous contact whatsoever.

At the 2005 general election he attended a press conference to demolish a far-fetched Opposition claim that more than 200 UK ports of entry would be manned for immigration control.