In 1974, while working as a stockbroker at de Zoete & Bevan and living in Suffolk,[3] he took over the running of the Woburn Estates from his father, a pioneer of the commercialisation of country houses, who then retired as a tax-exile to Monaco.

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.

[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.

Henrietta, Dowager Duchess of Bedford, is a granddaughter of Frank Cyril Tiarks and a relative of Mark Phillips, and following her husband's death spends most of her time at their house in Matamata, New Zealand.