Джон Рассел, 13-й герцог Бедфордский: Жизнь и Наследие

British peer and writer (1917–2002)

John Ian Robert Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford (24 May 1917 – 25 October 2002), styled Lord Howland until 1940, and styled Marquess of Tavistock from 1940 until 1953, was a writer and a British peer. As a businessman, the Duke and J. Chipperfield founded Woburn Safari Park, a commercial addition and expansion of the tourist business of Woburn Abbey, the family seat.

John Ian Robert Russell was born the son of Hastings Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford and Louisa Russell, Duchess of Bedford. Russell had a strained relationship with his father and grandfather for their refusing him an allowance that he (Ian) felt would be suitable and sufficient for a future Duke of Bedford. In youth, the 13th Duke of Bedford was known as Ian, and addressed with the courtesy title Lord Howland. At his father's succession to the dukedom of Bedford in 1940, and his consequent adoption of the courtesy title "Lord Howland", Ian then acquired the courtesy title Marquess of Tavistock until he became Duke of Bedford in the 1950s.

Ian Russell began as a rent collector in 1938, in Stepney. In 1939, he joined the Coldstream Guards and fought in the Second World War between 1939 and 1940, but left the army after being invalided. In 1940, he became a reporter for the Daily Express. In 1948, he emigrated to the Union of South Africa where he farmed in the Paarl area, before returning to the UK upon succeeding to his father's estates. In 1953, at the death of his father, the 12th Duke of Bedford, Russell then faced death duty taxes of $14 million, but paid that tax debt by commercialising the house and lands of Woburn Abbey, and charging admission to the local public and foreign tourists, in 1955, instead of handing over the family estates to the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, and later expanded the Woburn Abbey business with the creation and addition of the Woburn Safari Park, in 1970. Russell's commercialisation of his Woburn Abbey property alienated some peers from being his friends and neighbours. In response to the aristocratic scorn about the commercial vulgarity of a profitable safari park, Russell said that: “I do not relish the scorn of the peerage, but it is better to be looked down on than [to be] overlooked”. He appeared in British, American, and West German feature films and television programmes, including The Iron Maiden (filmed partially at Woburn); V. I. P. Schaukel, with Margret Dünser; Coronation Street; and The Golden Shot. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1985.