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And when share prices collapsed in the new millennium, the basis of the companies’ calculations also collapsed, as their funds could no longer pay for the pensions they had promised, and august companies like the Equitable faced disaster.There was also a much more fundamental change in the behaviour of the British people, which the actuaries and insurance managers were slow to hoist in, or to explain. But the golden age of pensions was already fading by the late Eighties, when the Thatcher government successfully brought down inflation. After 1973, the burst of inflation, which wreaked havoc with many individual savings, benefited the insurance companies which had invested in shares. He was a critical opponent of the growing practice of secondary legislation by recourse to broadly drawn “skeleton” Bills. These enable the Government to put through limitless orders and statutory instruments that lay down the details of policy. By such means, he argued, Parliament was effectively bypassed and its will thwarted because there was insufficient scrutiny of secondary legislation.Secondly, he was a felicitous orator and on his best form was outstanding.

A memorable occasion was during the passage of the Bill incorporating Human Rights. The Church of England had campaigned for it but, in the event, sought to be excluded from some of its provisions. Russell devastatingly exposed the hypocrisy of the bench of bishops in this regard.He usually spoke with only the barest of notes, just a list of key words, peppering his speech with historical references; these went down well for the most part but were sometimes too recondite or contrived and fell flat. He also displayed a very special sense of humour which was much enjoyed by the House but which, again, could be very private and apparently appreciated only by himself. His last speech on 15 September was in a debate on the constitution. Despite the divorce, the couple appear ostentatiously friendly in public, noisily embracing each other’s new squeezes.It’s a period of calm for the UK’s most bankable male movie star.

According to the Hollywood trade magazines, he can now ask for $12m per picture. He’s very much the clean-cut juvenile lead du choix in Hollywood, just as Colin Farrell is everyone’s first choice for dirty scoundrel. And a dozen more projects are massing on the horizon; they include playing Sebastian Flyte in a remake of Brideshead Revisited, starring in a remake of All the King’s Men from Robert Penn Warren’s classic novel, and turning up in Superman Returns.His film choices are as eclectic and various as ever – you’d think he’d managed his whole career to avoid boredom or typecasting – but he’s earned, whether through hard work or emotional trauma, the right to be taken seriously as an actor of depth, resource and focussed intelligence. Although he was a radical in his political outlook and adopted a reformist stance, he had a sensitive appreciation for form and protocol. This was endearing in its way; some may have found some of his other traits less appealing.He had a very real sense of history including his personal lineage He succeeded his half-brother to the title in 1987 He referred to the Lords on occasions as “our House”. There is no doubt earlier he would have cherished an Oxford chair but this also eluded him.

In many ways he was the epitome of an Oxbridge don, not least in being somewhat eccentric; for example, he would carry his heavy bundle of papers in a plastic carrier bag in the Lords. His sojourn at UCL was not a happy one and he contrived to be translated to King’s College in 1990 – even more convenient for the Lords – where he remained until his retirement in 2002.He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991 but, rather surprisingly, did not gather the crop of honorary doctorates that might have been expected for someone of his standing. He was educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, where he read History. He spent most of his professional life in London University, apart from five years as a professor at Yale. He was successively Lecturer and Reader at Bedford College, then at Yale, before being appointed to the prestigious Astor chair in British History at University College London in 1984.