Walter Russell Brain, First Baron Brain of Eynsham, 1895-1966

Abstract

Walter Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain of Eynsham, physician, medical statesman, essayist, public servant, medical scientist, poet, was born at Reading on 23 October 1895. His paternal ancestors, fully recorded in Burke's Peerage , had been settled in Ascott-under-Wychwood from 1693. The Brain family had come to Reading about 1800 in the person of his great-great-grandfather, Thomas Brain, who was born at Church Hanborough in Oxfordshire. His son, John Brain, was a boot-maker, but he must have been an unusual one. He was friendly with Thomas Noon Talfourd, the judge and writer who moved in literary circles and to whom Dickens dedicated Pickwick Papers . John Brain was also very musical; he played the violin and conducted the choir at Broad Street Congregational Church. His youngest child and only son, Russell’s grandfather, John Alfred Brain, inherited his father’s musical and literary tastes. He had a good baritone voice and it was a family tradition that it was once suggested he should take up operatic singing. He used to take the bass solos in local oratorios. He delivered a lecture on Thomas Noon Talfourd and wrote occasional papers on local worthies, and ballads, and these were collected and printed by his family after his death. He was himself a local worthy, a magistrate, and the kind of person people turned to to draft an address.