Legal career īridge was called to the bar at Inner Temple in 1947, having achieved the first place in that year's bar exams. He then became much in demand as a defending officer, giving him a taste for advocacy. Shortly after he was commissioned, and without any previous experience, he successfully defended a soldier on a charge of desertion at a court-martial. He was demobilised in 1946 with the rank of captain. He was instead conscripted into the British Army in 1940, and commissioned into the King's Royal Rifle Corps, serving in Italy, north-west Europe, and Germany. He volunteered to join the Fleet Air Arm before the Second World War broke out, but was rejected as being colour blind. Returning to Britain, he worked as a journalist on regional newspapers in Lancashire, and wrote an unpublished novel. Disliking the school, he went to Europe, where he learned French and German. He followed his elder brother to Marlborough College, with a scholarship. He was the younger brother of Anthony Bridge, later Dean of Guildford. He never met his father, who had abandoned his mother shortly after his birth.

Bridge was born in Codicote, Hertfordshire, the second son of Commander Cyprian Dunscomb Charles Bridge, Royal Navy, and of Gladys Bridge, née Steel, the daughter of a Lancashire cotton manufacturer.

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