I'm a Lord, and Don't You Forget It!

On Bertrand Russell's title

It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that no sensible person passes up the opportunity to laugh at Bertrand Russell. In light of which fact, here’s a curious tale from May 1945, which for few days competed with the Allied victory in World War II for newspaper headlines.

Evening Standard, May 19, 1945

Yes, you’ve got that right. It’s Bertrand Russell insisting that he should be addressed as Lord Russell, not Mr Russell, nor Professor Russell, nor Dr Russell, or anything else to that effect. “I have never wished to be called “Mr” and I am not a doctor or a professor,” he added, by way of an explanation.

It turns out that Lord Russell’s nominative preferences were big news in 1945. Just how big, though, is scarcely credible.

Here’s the Manchester Evening News:

Manchester Evening News, May 19, 1945

The London Times:

London Times, May 21, 1945

The Sunday Dispatch:

The Sunday Dispatch, 20 May, 1945

And The Guardian:

Guardian, May 22, 1945

I’m sure you get the point - for a few days in May 1945, the question of Bertrand Russell’s title was headline news.

This tale would be amusing enough on its own, but its appearance in The Sunday Dispatch (above) alongside the story of an ex-Chindit soldier - jobless after losing fingers and an eye in Burma - makes Russell's title-related anxieties seem particularly trivial.

But actually there's a revealing twist to this tale of aristocratic nomenclature. The day before Russell's seemingly pompous press release, an article appeared in The Daily Mirror, that detailed his wife’s claim that hospitals were prioritising the rich over the poor, only treating her sick child after her status as "Lady Russell" became known.

The Daily Mirror coverage added a pointed note at the end about her background as Russell's former secretary, which perhaps contained the implication of social climbing.

In this light, the most plausible explanation of Russell’s press release is that it sprang from a desire to defend his wife. It seems he was trying to make it clear that his wife was not alone in her use of their title, and that her use of it wasn’t born of snoberry or vanity or out of a desire for social status, but rather it was simply a matter of following his own preference for using their proper title.