Bertrand Russell was a major figure in the history of ideas - and he spent the final years of his momentous life at Plas Penrhyn, his country home in North Wales.
From this house in Penrhyndeudraeth he sent telegrams to Khrushchev and Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and it was here also that he wrote his autobiography in three volumes between 1967-9.
In one passage he describes his first impressions of the house:
'We stopped in North Wales where our friends Rupert and Elizabeth Crawshay-Williams had found a house, Plas Penrhyn, that they thought would make a pleasant holiday house for us and the children. It was small and unpretentious, but had a delightful garden and little orchard and a number of fine beech trees. Above all, it had a most lovely view, south to the sea, west to Portmadoc and the Caernarvon hills, and north up the valley of the Glasslyn to Snowdon. I was captivated by it, and particularly pleased that across the valley could be seen the house where Shelley lived. The owner of Plas Penrhyn agreed to let it to us largely, I think, because he, too, is a lover of Shelley and was much taken by my desire to write an essay on 'Shelley the Tough' (as opposed to the 'ineffectual angel'). Later, I met a man at Tan-y-Ralt, Shelley's house, who said he had been a cannibal...'
Russell was a philosopher, a mathematician and a sociologist, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.
He was born in Trellech, Gwent, into a titled family but was orphaned by the age of four. He spent the rest of his childhood with his grandparents, Lord John Russell - twice prime minister - and Lady John, who was strict and austere. Russell's youth was filled with rules and prohibitions, and he longed for freedom.
Russell's brilliance was soon recognized at Trinity College, Cambridge, and after graduating he worked briefly at the British Embassy in Paris, before becoming a fellow of Trinity College. Rebelling against his family, he married an American, Alys Persall Smith, and went to Berlin, where he wrote his first book. His first major work was The Principles of Mathematics (1903) and he followed this with important works on maths and philosophy, before turning away from maths.
He stood unsuccessfully for parliament in 1907 as a candidate for the Women's Suffragette Society, and then gave most of his money away because he thought inherited wealth was immoral. When the First World War broke out he declared himself a pacifist and lost his job.
By 1936 he had remarried, to his research assistant Patricia Spence and moved to America, as a professor at the University of California, and by 1940 he was Professor of Philosophy at New York. But his views were considered too daring and he moved on to Harvard. His History of Western Philosophy (1945) gave him financial security and earned him the Nobel Prize. In 1944 he returned to Cambridge.
Russell was imprisoned in 1961 - when he was over 90 - with his fourth and final wife Edith Finch, for taking part in a demonstration. His last years were spent in North Wales.
In his autobiography he said: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
Russell died of flu in February 1970, at Penrhyndeudraeth, aged 97. His ashes are scattered in the Welsh hills.
A man of ideas, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, philosopher, social reformer and peace activist.
