Chris Hall in The Guardian:
The Observer Magazine has never again featured an extract from the autobiography of a philosopher on its cover after ‘The Great Years of Bertrand Russell’, 26 February 1967.
But then Bertrand Russell was no ordinary philosopher. ‘Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life,’ he wrote. ‘The longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.’
Russell had his share of death to deal with – his mother, father and sister all died before he was four and his grandfather (a former prime minister) when he was six. His grandmother was the most important person to him in his childhood, although ‘by the age of 14, her intellectual limitations became trying to me, and her Puritan morality began to seem to me to be excessive’.
More here.