Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was born in Trellech, Monmouthshire, in 1872 into an aristocratic Liberal family and became one of the founders of analytic philosophy. A Liberal in his youth, he stood for Parliament as a women's suffrage candidate in 1907 and later as a Labour candidate in 1922 and 1923. His opposition to the First World War cost him his Trinity College post and led to five months in Brixton Prison in 1918. He became the third Earl Russell in 1931, received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950, and in old age led campaigns against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. He died in Wales in 1970.

Russell is remembered both as a giant of logic and philosophy and as one of the 20th century's best known public dissenters. Admirers credit him with courage in opposing the First World War, defending free thought and leading the early movement against nuclear weapons. Critics argue that his political judgments were erratic: he supported appeasement before the Second World War, made disputed remarks in 1948 about war with the Soviet Union, and later lent his name to one-sided campaigns against American policy. His views on marriage and religion led a New York court in 1940 to block his appointment at City College as 'morally unfit'.