Talk:Colonel Charles Russell

info from the books as I read them

In book 21, The Mischief Makers, no longer smokes, still drinks, and still has a mustache; hopes Willy Smith will take over the Executive

In book 2, Venetian Blind lots of stuff:

Russell has said he will retire in six months. No one in his department really qualified to succeed him. the Home Secretary (who IS a Minister), Gabriel Palliser, says that Russell "was something special. He had it both ways: he ran the machine, and ran it beautifully -- the files, the dossiers, the interminable cross-checking. All that is essential, it's nine-tenths of the job, and it wouldn't be difficult to find a man to carry it. But it's the other tenth, nowadays, that counts in the pinches, and for that Russell had a flair. A nose. He smelt things...Colonel Russell is... something exceptional. He has a nose for the suspect but he detests suspicion; he's a humanist, a liberal in the oldest, best sense... you can't trust many when it comes to that sort of power." pages 12-13

Russell's room: untidyness; Benares brass and silver trophies; excellent Persian rugs; admirably attended mustache; soldierly but slightly donnish == page 34

Still smokes a pipe (54) and cigarettes when offered (60): champagne didn't agree with him... but he seldom declined it -- page 54

Says he's "an indifferent bridge player" (61)

has sherry and biscuits for lunch when too busy to go out (63)

"He was a churchgoer by mild conviction, but not a moralist." His vicar is a High Churchman. (64)

"I'm sixty" page 123