Alexander Russel

Alexander Russel (or sometimes Russell) FRSE (1814–1876) was a Scottish newspaper editor, who spent nearly 30 years as the editor of The Scotsman.

Early life Russel was born on 10 December 1814 in Edinburgh; his father, a solicitor and a liberal in politics, died when he was still very young, whilst his mother, a daughter of John Somerville, clerk in the jury court, survived until Alexander was 50. After attending the classical school kept by the Rev. Ross Kennedy in St. James Square, Edinburgh, he was apprenticed in 1828 to a printer. John Johnstone, later editor of the Inverness Courier, was one of his fellow-apprentices, and his wife Christian Isobel Johnstone, who had a major role in editing Tait's Magazine, gave Russel the opportunity of contributing to that magazine.

In 1839 Russel was appointed editor of the Berwick Advertiser. While at Berwick-on-Tweed he made the acquaintance of David Robertson of Ladykirk, and with him took part in Northumbrian political contests. In 1842 he left Berwick for Cupar in Fife, where he edited the Fife Herald. There he met some influential liberals, including Admiral Wemyss, Edward Ellice the elder and his son.

Later life In 1865 he was living at 2 Ramsay Gardens at the top of the Royal Mile.

Russel attended and described the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Serious illness in 1872 compelled him to winter in the south of France.

In 1870 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposer being Archibald Campbell Swinton.

He lived his final years at 9 Chester Street in Edinburgh's fashionable West End.

He died suddenly, of angina pectoris, on 18 July 1876. Russel was noted as a conversationalist as well as a writer, but not as a public speaker, and he declined in 1872 an invitation to become a candidate for the lord-rectorship of Aberdeen. A son, Patrick, was a first-class cricketer.

Publications (as author)

Jumps in Jura (1856)