Odo Russell
(1829-1884)
2 September 1864

Volume 12, page 174, sitting number 15,846. 

A scion of one of England's aristocratic Whig families, Odo William Leopold Russell was born on 20 February 1820, the son of Lord George Russell, second son of the 6th Duke of Bedford. His uncle was the 1st Earl Russell, who twice served as Prime Minister. 

His education, like that of his two brothers, was carried on entirely at home, under the direction of his mother. In March 1849 he entered the diplomatic service as an attaché at Vienna. Other positions followed in Paris, Constantinople, Washington, and Florence. From 1858 to 1870 he was stationed in Rome, where he was the de facto though unofficial representative of Great Britain at the Vatican. 

On 5 May 1868 he married Lady Emily Villiers, daughter of George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon. Their marriage produced six children. 

In October 1871 he was appointed British ambassador in Berlin, where he gained the confidence of Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. In 1878 he was one of the British delegates at the Congress of Berlin, along with Disraeli and Salisbury. 

When his eldest brother became the 9th Duke of Bedford in 1872, Russell was granted the rank of a younger son of a duke and was thenceforth styled Lord Odo Russell. That same year he was sworn of the Privy Council. In 1874 he was made a GCB and in 1879 a GCMG. In 1881 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Ampthill of Ampthill in the County of Bedford. 

Lord Ampthill died, aged 54, of peritonitis on 25 August 1884 at his summer villa in Potsdam. His body was brought back to England and he was buried in the Bedford Chapel at St Michael's Church, Chenies, Buckinghamshire. He left an estate valued at £45,994.