William Howard Russell

He was born in Lilyvale in the county of Dublin, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and briefly at Cambridge. Russell was a journalist for The Times in Ireland, and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1851. On the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 he was sent as a special correspondent. In 1856 Russell was sent to Moscow to describe the coronation of Tsar Alexander II, and in the following year was sent to India where he witnessed the siege of Lucknow (1858). In 1861 Russell went to Washington. He later published diaries of his time in India, the American Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian War. Russell returned to England in 1863. In the 1869 General Election Russell ran unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate for the borough of Chelsea. His description of the burning of Paris by the Communards has been seen as his greatest triumph. Russell was knighted in May 1895; he married twice. Russell's dispatches via telegraph from the Crimea remain his most enduring legacy as, for the first time, he brought the realities of war, both good and bad, home to readers. Thus he helped to diminish the distance between the home front and remote battle fields.