The eloquent and intimate biography of one of the most significant figures of the last century.


Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and won the Nobel Prize for literature. Born into the high world of the Whig aristocracy, among people for whom Waterloo was still almost a personal memory, Russell lived to inspire the campaign against nuclear warfare. He was imprisoned in 1918 for his Pacifism.


Ronald Clark, with access to a mass of material, provides a fascinating and graphic portrait of the man. There is virtually no aspect of Russell's long life to which something new - and often unexpected - is not added by this remarkable and incisive book.

Ronald Clark (1916-1987) born in London and educated at King's College School. In 1933 he chose journalism as a career. During the Second World War, after being turned down for military duty on medical grounds, he served as a war correspondent. During this time Clark landed on Juno Beach with the Canadians on D-Day and followed the war until it's end, then remained in Germany to report on the major War Crimes trials.

Clark returned to Britain in 1948 and wrote extensively on subjects ranging from mountain climbing to the atomic bomb, Balmoral Castle to world explorers. He also wrote a number of biographies on a myriad of figures, such as: Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Sigmund Freud, and Bertrand Russell.