John Russell, 7th Earl Russell

The Right Honourable
The Earl Russell
Official portrait, 2023
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Elected hereditary peer
13 June 2023 – 29 April 2026
By-election13 June 2023
Preceded byThe 15th Viscount Falkland
Incumbent
Life peer
30 March 2026
Personal details
BornJohn Francis Russell
(1971-11-19) 19 November 1971
PartyLiberal Democrats
Children2
Parents
OccupationFreelance photographer

John Francis Russell, 7th Earl Russell (born 19 November 1971), is a British hereditary peer, life peer, photographer, and Liberal Democrat politician.

Early life

The younger son of Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell, a professor of history at Yale University, and his wife Elizabeth Franklin Sanders, Russell is also a grandson of the philosopher Bertrand Russell and a great-great-grandson of John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, a Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was educated at the William Ellis School, Highgate.[1]

As a teenager, he took adventure training holidays at Ty'n y Berth, a Wide Horizons centre in Wales, and he later became an advocate of providing disadvantaged children with such opportunities.[2]

Career

Russell works as a freelance photographer, specializing in "political photography, event photography, charity commissions and landscapes". In 2006, he was in-house photographer for Total Politics magazine and also works for the Liberal Democrats, the London Wildlife Trust, other charities, and individuals. He publishes work at Zenfolio.[3]

Russell became chairman of the Lewisham Liberal Democrats and was elected to serve as a Liberal Democrat councillor for Forest Hill on Lewisham Borough Council at the 2006 Lewisham London Borough Council election,[4] going on to chair the council's Overview and Scrutiny committee. He subsequently lost his seat in 2010.[4]

In 2012 he was his party's candidate for the Greenwich and Lewisham seat on the London Assembly.[5]

In 2006, Russell joined the board of Wide Horizons and chaired it from 2012. It went into administration and ceased trading in 2018.[2][6]

On 17 August 2014, on the death of his older brother Nicholas Russell, 6th Earl Russell, Russell succeeded as Earl Russell and Viscount Amberley, both in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.[1]

In the 2017 general election, he stood for the Liberal Democrats in Lewisham West and Penge, finishing third of seven candidates with 6.2% of the vote, and Labour's Ellie Reeves holding the seat.[7] At the 2022 Lewisham London Borough Council election, he again stood for election in the Forest Hill ward, and was unsuccessful, finishing eighth.[8]

In June 2023, Russell entered the House of Lords after winning a whole house by-election to fill a vacancy among the excepted hereditary peers.[9] As part of the 2025 Political Peerages, he was created a life peer, as Baron Russell of Forest Hill, of Forest Hill in the London Borough of Lewisham on 30 March 2026.[10][11]

Arms

Coat of arms of John Russell, 7th Earl Russell
Crest
A goat statant argent, armed and unguled or.
Escutcheon
Argent, a lion rampant gules, on a chief sable, three escallops of the field, over the centre escallop a mullet.
Supporters
Dexter, a lion gules; sinister, an heraldic antelope gules, armed, unguled, tufted, ducally gorged and chained, the chain reflexed over the back or; each supporter charged on the shoulder with a mullet argent.
Motto
Che sara sara (What must be must be).[12]

References

  1. ^ a b Burke's Peerage, volume 3, 2003, p. 3439.
  2. ^ a b DISPOSAL OF FORMER WIDE HORIZONS OUTDOOR EDUCATION SITES IN KENT & WALES, lewisham.gov.uk.
  3. ^ "John Russell". flickr.com. Retrieved 27 March 2025.
  4. ^ a b "London Borough of Lewisham Election Results 1964-2010" (PDF). Elections Centre. Retrieved 8 April 2026.
  5. ^ Massey, Nina (14 September 2011). "Lib Dems select John Russell as Lewisham and Greenwich candidate for London Assembly elections". News Shopper. Retrieved 26 March 2025.
  6. ^ "Wide Horizons". Archived from the original on 25 March 2022. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
  7. ^ "Lewisham West and Penge parliamentary constituency". BBC News.
  8. ^ "Election results for Forest Hill, 5 May 2022". 5 May 2022. Archived from the original on 27 June 2023.
  9. ^ "Hereditary peers' by-election, June 2023: result" (PDF). UK Parliament. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  10. ^ "Crown Office 30 March". Edinburgh Gazette. 31 March 2026. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  11. ^ "Political Peerages December 2025". GOV.UK. Retrieved 2 April 2026.
  12. ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage. 1899. p. 1263.
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