Biographical Sketch: Few men have been so richly endowed by inheritance or by gifts of intellect as Bertrand Russell and yet popular recognition came to him only very late in life.

He was born on 18 may 1872, and succeeded to the earldom were Lord John Russell, a Whig Prime Minister of the Victorian age, and Lord Stanley of Alderley.

Tragedy and conflict came into his life in the early years when at the age of three he was left an orphan became a ward of the Court largely in order to secure a Christian upbringing.