Reginald Maudling (7 March 1917 – 14 February 1979) was a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1962 to 1964 and as Home Secretary from 1970 to 1972. From 1955 until the late 1960s, he was spoken of as a prospective Conservative leader, and he was twice seriously considered for the post; he was Edward Heath's chief rival in 1965. He also held directorships in several British financial firms.

As Home Secretary, he was responsible for the UK Government's Northern Ireland policy during the period that included Bloody Sunday. In July 1972, he resigned as Home Secretary due to an unrelated scandal in one of the companies of which he was director.

Reginald Maudling was born in Woodside Park, North Finchley, and was named after his father, Reginald George Maudling, an actuary at R. Watson & Sons and Public Valuer, who contracted to do actuarial and financial calculations as the Commercial Calculating Company Ltd. The family moved to Bexhill to escape German air raids; Maudling won scholarships to the Merchant Taylors' School and Merton College, Oxford.

He stayed out of undergraduate politics at Oxford, and studied the works of Hegel; he was to formulate his conclusions later as to the inseparability of economic and political freedom: "the purpose of State control and the guiding principle of its application is the achievement of true freedom". He obtained a first class Greats degree.

Shortly after graduating, Maudling set up a meeting with Harold Nicolson to discuss whether it would be better, as a moderate conservative, to join the Conservative Party or National Labour; Nicolson advised him to wait. Maudling was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple in 1940. However, he did not practise as a barrister, having volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Second World War.^{[citation needed]}

Owing to poor eyesight he took desk jobs in the RAF intelligence branch, where he rose—as a "Wingless Wonder", as officers who were not qualified to wear pilot's wings were nicknamed—to the rank of flight lieutenant; he was then appointed Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair.

Maudling wrote an essay on Conservative policy in November 1943, recommending that the Conservatives neither imitate the Labour Party nor reflexively oppose all controls; in the general election of July 1945, he was selected as parliamentary candidate for Heston and Isleworth, a newly created constituency in Middlesex, although there were four applicants and he had no ties to that constituency. In the subsequent Labour landslide Maudling was defeated like many others, although Heston and Isleworth had been expected to be a safe Conservative seat. After its defeat in the 1945 general election, the Conservative Party engaged in an extensive rethink of its policy. Maudling argued that the Party had depended excessively on outdated economic slogans and the popularity of Winston Churchill.

In November 1945, Maudling became the first staff member of the Conservative Parliamentary Secretariat, later the Conservative Research Department, where he was head of the Economic Section. He persuaded the party to accept much of the Labour government's nationalisation programme and social services while cutting government spending. In March 1946, Maudling was chosen as the prospective candidate for Barnet, close to his birthplace in Finchley, and began giving speeches there. Labour had unexpectedly won the seat in 1945, but it was considered to be marginal. In 1950, Maudling was elected as Member of Parliament with an absolute majority.