[3]: 302  His father was from an aristocratic family related to the Dukes of Bedford, his mother a noted patron of the arts.

[4] In the Second World War Russell initially applied for registration as a conscientious objector, and was formally exempted from combatant service, but changed his mind.

Russell was an early advocate of a historically-informed approach to instrument-building, based on study of surviving historical examples, and a return to traditional methods of both performance and construction.

[1] Russell was also an expert on, and collector of, early treatises of medicine; towards the end of his life, he researched the antiquities of the island of Malta.

[6]: vii By 1960 Russell had decided to donate his collection to Edinburgh University, where it was to become the nucleus of a centre for research in keyboard performance practice and organology, but this plan was not completed by the time of his death.