Patricia Russell, Countess Russell Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell, who became a prominent historian and one of the leading figures in the Liberal Democrat party. They had an acrimonious separation in 1949. Patricia Russell, Countess Russell Patricia Russell, Countess Russell (1910–2004) was the third wife of philosopher Bertrand Russell, and a significant contributor to his book "A History of Western Philosophy". Countess Russell was born Marjorie Helen Spence in 1910. As her parents had always wanted a boy, she was known as 'Peter'. She met Bertrand Russell in 1930 when she was a twenty-year-old undergraduate at the University of Oxford, hired by Russell's second
Bertrand Russell author, feminist and socialist campaigner, visited Russia independently at the same time; in contrast to his reaction, she was enthusiastic about the revolution. The following autumn Russell, accompanied by Dora, visited Peking (as it was then known in the West) to lecture on philosophy for a year. He went with optimism and hope, seeing China as then being on a new path. Other scholars present in China at the time included John Dewey and Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian Nobel-laureate poet. Before leaving China, Russell became gravely ill with pneumonia, and incorrect reports of his death were published in the Japanese