 Ramsden was born in Liverpool in 1923, the son of Captain Edward Ramsden and his wife Geraldine.His father was a brother of George Taylor Ramsden, a Coalition Unionist MP for Elland, while his mother was a sister of brothers Sir Frank O'Brien Wilson (a Royal Navy officer and early settler of Kenya) and Sir Murrough John Wilson (a Conservative MP for Richmond, Yorkshire).During the Second World War, he served as a lieutenant with the King's Royal Rifle Corps.