Ronald Joseph Ridout (23 July 1916 – 5 December 1994)[1] was a prolific English writer of school textbooks.
The enormous success of the English Today books led to him leaving the classroom in 1950 to devote his time to writing.
Ridout collaborated with Phyllis Flowerdew on a number of primary school readers during the 1960s for the publishers Oliver and Boyd.
So prolific was his output and huge his sales, exceeding seventy million, that he earned a place in The Guinness Book of World Records.
111–112 (selected bibliography) A. to Z. of English, (with Michael Tristram, Neil Straker and Timothy Jaques), Collins - ISBN 0-246-12707-4 Better English (1961) Ginn & Company, (reprinted 2000 by Heinemann ISBN 0-602-20243-4) Book for Me to Read (with Ruth Ainsworth), Series, Purnell Bancroft Children's Dictionary (1983) Collins ISBN 0-246-12237-4 English Now, Books 1 - 5, Ginn & Company English Today, Books 1 - 5 (1947), Ginn & Company English Workbooks, Books 1 - 8, Ginn & Company English Workbooks for the Caribbean, Books 1 - 8, (1968) Ginn & Company Evans Graded Verse (with Michael Knight) (1978), Evans Bros. ISBN 0-237-50202-X Facts of English (with Clifford Witting) (1973) Macmillan Publishers ISBN 0-330-23534-6 Getting on with Dividing (with Michael Holt and Jon Miller) (1986) Collins ISBN 0-00-197335-5 Getting on with Mathematics (with Michael Holt and Jon Miller) (1986) Collins Getting on with Multiplying (with Michael Holt and Jon Miller) (1986), Collins ISBN 0-00-197334-7 Getting on with Spelling, Series, (with Michael Holt and Leon Baxter), (1986), Collins The Life Cycle of Cats (with Michael Holt), illustrated by Tony Payne.