Editing Richard Ingrams (section)

==Early life and education==
[[File:Shrewsbury School 1.JPG|thumb|Shrewsbury School]]
Ingrams's parents, who had three other sons including the banker and opera impresario [[Leonard Ingrams]],<ref name="telegraph.co.uk">{{cite news |url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/8357443/Richard-Ingrams-in-love-is-he-serious.html |title=Richard Ingrams in love – is he serious? |first=Elizabeth |last=Grice |work=The Telegraph |location= London |date=3 March 2011}}</ref> were Leonard St Clair Ingrams (1900–1953)<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ginnydougary.co.uk/old-at-heart-richard-ingrams/|title=Ginny Dougary :: Award-winning journalist and writer » Old at heart: Richard Ingrams}}</ref> 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,<ref>Winning the Peace: The British in Occupied Germany, 1945–1948, Christopher Knowles, 2017, p. 218</ref><ref>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Lawrence Goldman, 2013, p. 587</ref> 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, 2nd Earl Grey|Charles Grey]].<ref name="independant.co.uk">[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/leonard-ingrams-303060.html Leonard Ingrams] by Paul Levy, ''The Independent'', 1 August 2005.</ref>

Ingrams was educated at the independent [[Preparatory school (UK)|preparatory school]] [[West Downs 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 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, Baron Butler of Brockwell|Robin Butler]], later cabinet secretary and sometimes referred to as a "pillar of [[the Establishment]]". Ingrams also met [[Paul Foot (journalist)|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.{{cn|date=November 2024}}