Kidd, Sir Robert Hill (1918–2004), civil servant, was born in Belfast on 3 February 1918, son of Andrew Kidd, wholesale leather merchant whose business was located in Ann Street, Belfast, and his wife Florence (née Hill). The family were non‑subscribing presbyterians. Kidd was educated at Belfast Academical Institute and won an entrance scholarship and classical sizarship at TCD, where he took a first class degree in classics in 1940 (Moderatorship: 79.3 per cent), winning a gold medal and a university studentship which allowed him to complete a B.Litt. (1941). During his postgraduate year he did some class lecturing. Sir William Tate, senior fellow and classics lecturer, stated in a testimonial, dated 29 August 1941, that while the university would not publish his exact marks, they had rarely, if ever, been surpassed. The eulogist at his funeral, Brian Trainor, spoke of how 'Sir Robert's stay at Trinity had a crucial formative influence upon him. He was always at ease anywhere in Ireland and had friends all over the country.'
Kidd voluntarily served in the British army 1941–6. Beginning as a private in the Royal Ulster Rifles, he rose to the rank of major, serving in the Intelligence Corps of the South‑East Asia Command. On demobilisation he applied to join the Indian civil service, but was turned down after stating at interview that he believed the most important function of the ICS would be to prepare India for independence. Although he was offered lectureships in classics by the universities of London and Exeter, in 1947 he joined the Northern Ireland civil service as an assistant principal, one of a dozen potential high‑fliers recruited at the time, and was posted to the Ministry of Finance. His wife would have preferred him to pursue an academic career (her family had strong academic traditions; her mother and grandmother had gone to university and her mother was senior lecturer in modern languages at QUB). Kidd's decision was attributed by friends partly to attachment to his native east Belfast and partly to a desire to serve the public directly.
As a civil servant Kidd participated in the large‑scale post-war expansion of public services. He had a particularly significant role in giving Northern Ireland a network of cultural institutions, which remain his principal memorial; they were financed by a scheme of his devising whereby Northern Ireland farmers' land annuity payments were allocated to a land purchase annuity fund. He played a leading role in the development of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra in north Down (opened in 1964), and the creation of the Ulster‑American Folk Park outside Omagh, Co. Tyrone (opened in 1978), which was only made possible by the use of labour from government training and job creation schemes and by creatively tapping various sources of funding. In retirement he was a member of the Scotch‑Irish Trust of Ulster, endowed by the Mellon family to maintain their ancestral home site which is at the core of the folk park, and contributed significantly to the folk park's development as a major educational and tourism resource.
Kidd was also central to the renovation and expansion of the Belfast Museum (renamed the Ulster Museum) in the early 1960s. (The artefacts recovered from the Spanish galleon Girona off the north Antrim coast in 1967–8 are one of the Ulster Museum's major attractions; Kidd allegedly repulsed an attempt by the Greenwich Maritime Museum to secure them by pointing out that the galleon was 'sunk by Irish rocks' – Irish Times, 13 March 2004.) He was responsible for the construction of a purpose‑built Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (opened 1972) at the site of a former borstal on Balmoral Avenue in south Belfast (defeating an alternative proposal that it should be located in an extension to the QUB library). He was greatly respected by his colleagues, who privately called him 'the wise old owl' (Irish News obituary). Sir Kenneth Bloomfield's memoir describes him as one of several 'appreciative and shrewd mentors' he had encountered in the Ministry of Finance (Bloomfield, Stormont in crisis, 41).
Kidd served as a Ministry of Finance assessor on the Lockwood commission (first sat March 1963; report published 10 February 1965), whose decision, that the New University of Ulster (established 1968) should be located at Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, rather than around the existing Magee College in Derry city, aroused widespread criticism from nationalists. Kidd always maintained that the commissioners had not been influenced by any outside lobbying, and their decision reflected their belief that a greenfield site was necessary to provide room for expansion. (They also felt that Donegal could not be considered as part of the university's catchment area – as proposed by advocates of the Derry site – because students from the Republic were not eligible for Northern Ireland state scholarships.) In hindsight, Kidd emphasised that the commission's remit had been to consider higher education across Northern Ireland, rather than simply the question of a second university, and that they might have chosen a different site had they known that the QUB agriculture faculty would not be transferred to Coleraine (as they recommended) and that undergraduate teaching would continue on the Magee campus.
In 1968 Kidd became head of the Ministry of Finance (second secretary and accounting officer 1969–76, ranking as a permanent secretary; the permanent secretary of finance was now formally head of the civil service with the task of co‑ordinating the various government departments, with Kidd running the Ministry of Finance and attending public accounts committee meetings at Stormont until 1972 and thereafter at Westminster). In 1976 he was the first Ulsterman to head the Northern Ireland civil service and was made CB. Roy Mason (qv), then secretary of state for Northern Ireland, recorded that Kidd's 'deep knowledge of the Irish scene was invaluable' in the defeat of the 1977 loyalist strike led by Ian Paisley (qv) (Mason, Paying the price, 175). In the same year Kidd organised a visit to Northern Ireland by Queen Elizabeth II as part of her silver jubilee celebrations, despite security concerns; to maintain the secrecy necessary for the visit, Kidd took exclusive responsibility for Queen Elizabeth's movements while his deputy (and eventual successor), Ewart Bell (qv), did the same for Prince Philip. Kidd retired in mid‑1979 and was knighted (KBE). In 1980 he carried out a review of Northern Ireland's industrial incentives; he recommended that the disparate industrial development bodies should be united, and this was eventually done.
Despite a serious road accident soon after his retirement, which incapacitated him until late 1980, Kidd worked almost full‑time (unpaid) with various community and reconciliation groups. He co‑founded Co‑Operation North, was its Northern Ireland chairman (1980–84) and a director of its American arm, the Irish American Partnership. He was also a trustee of the Ulster Historical Foundation (1981–93); as its chairman (December 1987–November 1993) he oversaw its government‑decreed separation from PRONI and he put considerable effort into the government‑sponsored Irish genealogical project, serving as vice‑chairman of the Irish Family History Foundation and as a director of Irish Genealogy Ltd. He was a director of Allied Irish Bank (1979–85) and chairman (1983–8) of Belfast Car Ferries (which ran a Belfast–Liverpool service).
Kidd was pro‑vice‑chancellor and chairman of council of the New University of Ulster (1980–84), overseeing its merger with Jordanstown Polytechnic; since there had never previously been a merger between a UK university and a polytechnic, this was a complicated task. Complications included extreme pressure from the government (which imposed funding cutbacks and threatened that if necessary it would take the highly controversial step of revoking the NUU charter by legislation), the short time‑scale imposed – in April 1983 Kidd had to write to the Northern Ireland Office complaining that they had not been supplied with vital information about the details and possible consequences of the merger arrangements – and the resistance of some NUU council members to surrendering their original charter. He co‑chaired a joint working party which resolved the remaining difficulties connected with the merger, and before it went ahead he took responsibility for allocating much of the NUU cash reserve to improving facilities for staff, students and administrators at Coleraine. His term as chairman ended when the NUU charter was surrendered in autumn 1984. In July 1985 he was awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the newly constituted University of Ulster.
In April 1942 Kidd married Harriet Williamson (1919–2008), whom he had met at TCD where she was studying natural sciences; she was the daughter of Ernest Williamson, a presbyterian minister based in Ballina, Co. Mayo, and this connection strengthened his later interest in North–South links. They had three sons and two daughters, and shared a love of gardening; Harriet was an internationally renowned flower‑arranger and contributed a weekly gardening column to the Belfast Telegraph in the early 1960s (obituary, Irish Times, 29 November 2008). The Kidds' improvements to the Coleraine campus included the creation of a daffodil garden. They were also extremely fond of dogs.
Robert Kidd died in Dundonald Hospital, east Belfast, on 28 February 2004.