Henry Russell

Evil-doer
Full Name	Henry Russell
Alias	None
Origin	Peaky Blinders
Occupation	Field Marshal
Powers / Skills	Military prowess Physical strength
Hobby	Having sex
Goals	Suppress Irish republicanism
Crimes	War crimes Attempted rape
Type of Villain	Brutish Rapist

Field Marshal Henry Russell is a minor antagonist in Season 2 of the BBC crime drama Peaky Blinders.

He was portrayed by James Richard Marshall.

Biography

Russell is a Field Marshal in the British Army who was involved in suppressing the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. During the war he was a leader of the notorious "Black and Tans" paramilitaries and was involved in unspecified atrocities against civilians in County Cork, which led him to be marked for death by the IRA. Russell returned to England after the war was ended by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921.

The year after the treaty was signed, Russell is marked for death by a conspiracy between the pro-treaty IRA and the British government in the person of Major Chester Campbell, who intend to assassinate him and frame the anti-treaty IRA as a pretext for the British government to force the Irish provisional government to declare war against them. The conspirators strongarm Birmingham crime lord Tommy Shelby into carrying out the assassination due to Campbell's personal vendetta against him.

The initial plan is for Tommy to kill Russell at his house in Belgravia, but Tommy realizes that he will not be able to carry out the assassination without being caught by the police, as Campbell is planning to have him captured and executed after he kills Russell, and has Russell's house bombed so Campbell will be forced to change the location of the murder. He then declares that the murder will instead take place on Derby Day at the Epsom racetrack, which is controlled by Tommy's Peaky Blinders gang.

On Derby Day, Tommy arranges for his secretary, former prostitute Lizzie Stark, to seduce Russell into coming somewhere private so that Tommy can shoot him without being seen, on the understanding that Tommy will kill Russell before he has the chance to do anything. However, in the event Tommy is waylaid while on the way to kill Russell, who has several minutes alone with a reluctant Lizzie; growing impatient with her resistance, Russell overpowers her and tries to rape her. Tommy manages to reach him before he can do so, but his gun jams and Russell attacks and severely beats him. Russell temporarily gets the upper hand in the fight and continues beating Tommy until he manages to get hold of Russell's own gun and shoots him dead.

Trivia

• Russell is a fictionalised version of Sir Henry Hughes Wilson who, like Russell, was a British Field Marshal implicated in war crimes in County Cork during the Irish War of Independence. Wilson was ultimately assassinated by members of the Anti-Treaty IRA in 1922, sparking the Irish Civil War between the Irish Free State and the IRA.