He was born at Cairnsmore House, Minnigaff, Kirkcudbrightshire, the son of Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, and his wife Mary Du Caurroy Tribe, the aviator and ornithologist.

[2] A keen naturalist, Russell arranged a 1906 expedition to Shaanxi, China to collect zoological specimens for the British Museum, during which Arthur de Carle Sowerby discovered a new species of jerboa.

[6] Russell also frequently visited the Canadian province of Alberta where the Social Credit party led by a fundamentalist Protestant William "Bible Bill" Aberhart had won the 1935 election.

[7] The way that the Social Credit government of Alberta failed to carry out its program was understood by Russell not as due to the BNA act, but rather to a supposed conspiracy to impoverish the masses.

[10] In one letter dated 7 April 1938 he wrote: "Hitler is supported with enthusiasm by large sections of the population because he gave German youth faith and hope in the future, restored their self-respect, and did much to reduce unemployment".

[15] Tavistock recruited the famous explorer of Arabia, St. John Philby, to run as the BPP candidate in a by-election in Hythe solely on an anti-war platform.

[16] Philby in his 1948 memoir Arabian Days wrote "...I was approached by Lord Tavistock, John Beckett and Ben Greene of a new and small organisation called the British People's Party, with those general outlook I had no sympathy, though I fully and cordially agreed with the anti-war attitude.

[16] Reflecting the way that various extreme right movements in Britain often co-operated, Lady Domville, the wife of Admiral Barry Domvile, the leader of The Link, campaigned hard for Philby in the Hythe by-election.

[18] In the early months of the Second World War, he attended several meetings of leading figures on the far-right that Domvile had organised, although he was largely unenthusiastic about this initiative.

[26] He blamed the war on Poland, writing that he could not understand why during the Danzig crisis, Halifax had not pressured the Poles into accepting "Herr Hitler's extremely reasonable March proposals.

[27] At the start of 1940, he corresponded with the Home Secretary Sir John Anderson after obtaining a document from the German legation in Dublin that Russell claimed contained Adolf Hitler's draft proposals for peace.

[19] Following the obtaining of this document by Russell, on 13 March 1940 Domvile organised a meeting for both men, Mosley and Imperial Fascist League (IFL) veteran Bertie Mills to discuss their next course of action.

[29] The Special Branch described Godfrey in May 1940 as "an embittered and class-conscious proprietor of a chain of fish and chips shops...who is bitterly opposed to the war and violently anti-Jewish".

[29] ON 20 May 1940, a meeting was called at the Dover Castle pub in Bethel Green to discuss forming the British National Party to be led by Godfrey and which was to be funded entirely by Bedford's wealth.

[39] When Beckett was released Cutmore again asked Russell, by then Duke of Bedford, for help as they were penniless and he agreed to allow them to live in a cottage in the village of Chenies, at the time entirely owned by the Duchy.

[42] On 3 December 1941, Bedford took up his seat in the House of Lords, and immediately attracted attention for a series of speeches that condemned the Churchill government and the war.

[38] His speeches in the House of Lords were noted for their pro-Axis tone as he blamed the war on "the attempt by the moneylending financers and big business monopolists to destroy the relatively sane financial system of the Axis powers".

[43] Bedford used his great wealth during the war to fund a number of fascist groups such as the British National Party and the English Nationalists Association.

[44] In a letter to the pro-Nazi historian Sir Arthur Bryant dated 5 July 1944, Bedford bemoaned that the Allies were winning the war.

[48] In London, Middlesex, on 21 November 1914, he married Louisa Crommelin Roberta Jowitt Whitwell; the couple had three children: Russell was a committed Evangelical Christian[45] and vegetarian.

[42] Griffiths wrote that "many of his underlaying attitudes were of themselves admirable", but that Bedford's tendency to explain everything in terms of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as he believed that the Jews had vast secret powers that they used to dominate the world both politically and economically led him straight into the embrace of Nazism.