Background
Russell was the youngest of the six children of Lord Arthur Russell and Laura, the daughter of Paul Louis Jules, Vicomte de Peyronnet.
Russell was the youngest of the six children of Lord Arthur Russell and Laura, the daughter of Paul Louis Jules, Vicomte de Peyronnet.
He was educated privately, at home and abroad, before attending Balliol College, Oxford, where he formed part of a celebrated generation which included his friends Raymond Asquith, John Buchan, Aubrey Herbert, and Auberon Herbert.
Post Oxford, Russell engaged in a number of occupations (including employment in the Colonial Office and in the City), none of which he found wholly satisfactory. In the First World War he served in (among other units) the Bedfordshire Yeomanry and the 8th Hussars. A number of his friends were killed and he developed a life long aversion to military life.
After the war Russell took up farming.
In 1927 Russell took a lease of a farm on her family estate (Mells Manor, in Somerset) and there he remained for most of the remainder of his life. Lord Oxford provided the following assessment of Russell 40 years after his death:
“…a man of many contrasts: modest and diffident by temperament but clear-cut and forthright in his opinions.
A quizzical observer and recorder of odd concrete facts but given to abstract speculation in matters of philosophy and religion. Essentially kind but prone to astringency and even tartness in his comments.
Essentially truthful but a fascinating and shameless embroiderer of the truth.
Careful in money matters and somewhat absorbed in them, but extremely generous with all he had.”
Russell often exhibited a self-deprecating form of insouciance. On 3 April 1933 he wrote to Diana Cooper:
”…I am 55 today so my course is nearly run. lieutenant seems queer but I feel about 23 and very shy, callow and unformed – and quite without any knowledge of the world.
I’ve learnt nothing and made a hash of my life.
And instead of being humble and repentant I simply don’t care a button.”
A selection of Russell’s letters was published in 1987 by John Murray.
