Edward Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool

Lord Russell in 1933

Edward Frederick Langley Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool CBE, MC (10 April 1895 – 8 April 1981), was a British soldier, lawyer and historian.

Russell was the son of Richard Henry Langley Russell, second son of Edward Russell, 1st Baron Russell of Liverpool, and succeeded his grandfather to the title in 1920. He was educated at Liverpool College and St John's College, Cambridge.^[1] He served with distinction in the First World War, winning the Military Cross three times. He went on to become a prominent lawyer and as Deputy Judge Advocate General to the British Army of the Rhine he was one of the chief legal advisers during war-crimes trials held at the end of the Second World War. He later resigned, however, from his government post over the publication of his book The Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes. The Daily Express, under proprietor Lord Beaverbrook, published extracts under the heading "the book they tried to ban" in 1954, and the book became a bestseller. Russell followed it up in 1958 with The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes.

Lord Russell of Liverpool died in April 1981, aged 85, and was succeeded to the barony by his grandson, his only son Captain the Hon. Langley Gordon Haslingden Russell having predeceased him. In 1959, he and Bertrand Russell sent a joint letter to The Times explaining that they were different people.

Works

• The Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes (1954) (Also translated into Yiddish in 1956)
• Though the Heavens Fall (1956)
• The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes (1958)
• That Reminds Me (1959)
• If I Forget Thee: The Story of a Nation's Rebirth (1960)
• The Record; The Trial of Adolf Eichmann for His Crimes Against the Jewish People and Against Humanity (1961)
• The Royal Conscience (1961)
• Knight of the sword: The Life and Letters of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith (1962)
• The Tragedy of The Congo (1962)
• Prisons and Prisoners in Portugal: An Independent Investigation (1963)
• Deadman's Hill, was Hanratty Guilty? (1965)
• Henry of Navarre; Henry IV of France (1969)
• The French Corsairs (1970)
• Bernadotte: Marshal of France & King of Sweden (1981)

Books in which Edward Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool contributed a Forward or an Introduction

• Harvest of Hate: The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of Europe by Poliakov Leon (1954)
• The Urge to Punish: New Approaches to the Problem of Mental Irresponsibility for Crime by Henry Weihofen (1957)
• Forgive, But Do Not Forget by Sylvia Salvesen (1958)
• Commandant Of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess by Rudolf Hoess (1961)

References

1. "Russell, (Edward Frederick) Langley". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31636. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Sources

• Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages