John Russell, 4th Earl Russell
{{Short description|Son of Bertrand Russell, great-grandson of Lord John Russell}}
{{Other people|John Russell}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| honorific-prefix = The Right Honourable
| name = The Earl Russell
| image =
|office4 = Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
|term_start4 = 3 February 1970
|term_end4 = 16 December 1987
Hereditary Peerage
|predecessor4 = The 3rd Earl Russell
|successor4 = The 5th Earl Russell
| birth_date = 16 November 1921
| death_date = 16 December 1987 (aged 66)
| education =
Dartington Hall School
University of California
Harvard University
| spouse = Doniphan Lindsay
| children = 3
| parents = Bertrand Russell
Dora Black
}}
John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell (16 November 1921 – 16 December 1987), styled Viscount Amberley from 1931 to 1970, was the eldest son of the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (the 3rd Earl) and his second wife, Dora Black. His middle name was a tribute to the writer Joseph Conrad, whom his father had long admired.Kevin Jackson, Constellation of Genius – 1922: Modernism and All That Jazz, p. 47, footnote 36 He was the great-grandson of the 19th-century British Whig Prime Minister Lord John Russell. He succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father on 2 February 1970.
Education
John Russell was educated at the progressive Dartington Hall School, the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University. Upon leaving Harvard in 1943 he returned to Britain and enlisted in the Royal Naval Reserve.{{Who's Who | title=RUSSELL, 4th Earl (John Conrad Russell) | id = U168768 | type = was | volume = 2018 | edition = online}} In the Reserve, he learned the Japanese language.{{cite book |last1=Russell |first1=Bertrand |title=Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1914 - 1944) |date=1969 |publisher=Bantam Books |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.64782/page/n337 327] |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.64782}}
Career
Russell had a distinguished early career, working for the FAO among other organisations, but in later life he was diagnosed as schizophrenic.{{cite book |last1=Fitzgerald |first1=Michael |last2=Lyons |first2=Viktoria |title=Asperger Syndrome A Gift Or a Curse? |date=2005 |publisher=Nova Biomedical Books |page=290}} This made him the only person in the United Kingdom to be denied the vote on two counts, first, for being a peer and, second, for being insane. He delivered a speech in the House of Lords on 18 July 1978 that was considered so outlandish that it was claimed to be the only speech unrecorded by Hansard, although it is included in the online version[https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1978/jul/18/victims-of-crime-aid-policy#S5LV0395P0_19780718_HOL_409]at column 275. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240314185528/https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1978/jul/18/victims-of-crime-aid-policy#S5LV0395P0_19780718_HOL_409 |date=14 March 2024 }} while lacking the final section that he had written but failed to read aloud after being interrupted.{{Cite web|url=http://jot101.com/2021/02/visionary-speech-by-earl-russell-part-3/|title=Visionary Speech by Earl Russell (Part 3) | Jot101|date=7 February 2021 }}[https://books.google.com/books?id=KOggCwAAQBAJ&dq=%22So+embarrassing+was+this+episode+that+a+myth%22&pg=PT116 Great British Eccentrics, SD Tucker]
Personal life
He was married on 28 August 1946 to Susan Doniphan Lindsay, daughter of the poet Vachel Lindsay. They were divorced in 1955. They had three daughters: {{citation needed span|Lady Felicity Anne Russell (born 2 September 1945)|date=February 2022}}, Lady Sarah Elizabeth Russell {{citation needed span|(born 16 January 1946)|reason=The birth dates given for Felicity and Sarah are only four months apart|date=June 2018}}, and Lady Lucy Catherine Russell (21 July 1948 – 11 April 1975). Neither Sarah nor Lucy married or bore children; Felicity had one daughter, Rowan. Like their father and mother, the three daughters had mental illnesses. Lucy, who was Bertrand Russell's favourite grandchild, died from self-immolation, at the age of 26, in the forecourt of a church near Penzance, ostensibly protesting in the cause of world peace.Héctor Abad, [https://brickmag.com/the-reasoning-heart/ The Reasoning Heart]. Brick Magazine, No. 88 (Winter, 2012). Retrieved 2016-07-05. Like her father, Lucy was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Russell was succeeded as Earl by his half-brother, the historian Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell.
References
{{reflist}}
Bibliography
- {{ODNBweb | id=35875 | first=Ray | last=Monk | authorlink=Ray Monk | title=Russell, Bertrand Arthur William, third Earl Russell (1872–1970) | year=2004 | url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35875 | doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/35875 }}
External links
- {{Hansard-contribs | mr-john-russell-3 | the Earl Russell }}
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Category:20th-century British military personnel
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:People with schizophrenia
Category:History of mental health in the United Kingdom
Category:Royal Naval Reserve personnel
Category:University of California alumni
Category:People educated at Dartington Hall School
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