John Russell, 7th Earl Russell

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]

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 and ahead of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 coming into effect, 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]

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]