Robin Russell, 14th Duke of Bedford
Henrietta Joan Tiarks | |
---|---|
Issue | Andrew Russell, 15th Duke of Bedford Lord Robin Russell Lord James Russell |
Parents | Ian Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford Clare Gwendolen Bridgman |
(Henry) Robin Ian Russell, 14th Duke of Bedford
Career
Origins and education
He was born on 21 January 1940 at the
Business career
In 1974, while working as a stockbroker at de Zoete & Bevan and living in Suffolk,
He suffered a severe stroke on 21 February 1988 when he was aged just 48,[4] which he was not expected to survive. It curtailed his powers of speech and movement and led him to pursue a more relaxed lifestyle, and to be much less of a workaholic during his later years.
With his wife, Henrietta Tiarks (Marchioness of Tavistock and later Duchess of Bedford), he appeared in the BBC series Country House, detailing the daily life and estate management at Woburn Abbey, the ancestral seat of the Russell family.
He succeeded his father to the dukedom on 25 October 2002, but died just 7+1⁄2 months later on 13 June 2003 after another stroke in the Tavistock Intensive Care Unit, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, which he had been instrumental in establishing. This made him the shortest-lived Duke of Bedford. He had already handed over control of Woburn Abbey to his eldest son Andrew, Lord Howland, in 2001.
Père David's deer
After the extirpation in 1900 of the Chinese population of Père David's deer (or Milu deer), Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, was instrumental in saving the species, having acquired the few remaining deer from European zoos and formed a breeding herd in the deer park at Woburn Abbey. Robin Russell, then Marquess of Tavistock (the future 14th Duke of Bedford), the 11th Duke's great-grandson, was instrumental in re-establishing the species in China, having donated to that country two drafts from the Woburn herd, one in 1985 (5 males and 15 females) and the other in 1987 (18 females). The deer were released into the Nan Haizi Garden, later renamed Milu Park, in southern Beijing, the former imperial hunting grounds of the Ming and Qing emperors where the deer were last known in China.[5] In 2005 the Beijing authorities erected a statue of the 14th Duke (who had died two years earlier) at Nan Haizi to mark the 20th Anniversary of the Milu reintroduction, in the presence of his widow and three sons.
Marriage and issue
As
- Andrew Ian Henry Russell, 15th Duke of Bedford (b. 30 March 1962), eldest son and heir, who is married with a son (Henry Robin Charles Russell, Marquess of Tavistock (b.2005)) and a daughter;
- Lord Robin Loel Hastings Russell (b. 12 August 1963)
- Lord James Edward Herbrand Russell (b. 11 February 1975)
References
- ^ Country House made by Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC Two
- ^ "Person Page".
- ^ 6 May 2017 issue of the New Zealand Listener
- ISBN 0-7472-3790-5
- ^ South China Morning Post 26 Aug. 1985
- ^ "Chic Vintage Bride – Henrietta Joan Tiarks". Chic Vintage Brides. Archived from the original on 11 August 2014.
- ^ a b de Lore, Clare (6 May 2017). "The Dowager Duchess of Bedford: 'I feel much more at home in New Zealand'". New Zealand Listener. Archived from the original on 5 June 2020.
- ^ Who's Who, 1973, p.3228