Dear Bertie

One man who featured prominently in Lady Ottoline Morrell’s life was the mathematician and philosopher Bertie Russell.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, to give him his full due was born in 1872 in Monmouthshire to unconventional parents who had an ‘open marriage’ and unorthodox views on religion. Orphaned by the age of four, Bertie was then raised by his grandparents. After being introduced to the works of Euclid at the age of eleven, mathematics became a lifelong passion.

In 1903 he published The Principles of Mathematics, a revolutionary book which argues that mathematics and logic are the same. Unwavering in his pacifism, Bertie lost his teaching position at Cambridge in 1916 and was later jailed. It was an experience which he described as ‘quite agreeable… I read enormously; I wrote a book’. His own pacifism was challenged by the rise of Hitler and he eventually held that the Second World War was the lesser of two evils. However, for the rest of his life he remained resolute in his campaign against nuclear disarmament. Amongst his many honours was a Noble Prize for Literature and the Order of Merit.