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Hastings William Sackville Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford MA (December 21, 1888–October 9, 1953) was the son of Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford.

Educated at Eton College, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a Master of Arts (M.A.). In November 1914 he married Louisa Crommelin Roberta Jowitt Whitwell; the couple had three children:

• John Ian Robert Russell, 13th Duke of Bedford (1917–2002), who supplied a detailed and hostile portrait of him in the 1959 memoir A Silver-Plated Spoon;
• Lady Daphne Crommelin Russell (b. 2 September 1920);
• Lord Hugh Hastings Russell (1923–2005), married Rosemary Markby and had issue.

He gained the rank of Lieutenant in the service of the 10th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, and fought in the First World War. His subsequent advocacy of pacifism, and his closeness during the 1930s to Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, led to his name being placed on a list of persons to be arrested in the event of a German invasion [1]. He went on to be patron of the British Peoples Party, an anti-war party that was accused of fascist sympathies. He was also an ornithologist, specialising in parrots; his other pets included a spider whom according to Nancy Mitford's The English Aristocracy, he would regularly feed roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

He died in 1953, aged 64, as a result of a gunshot wound: perhaps incurred in a hunting accident, but perhaps deliberately self-inflicted, the latter explanation having been proffered by his elder son.

Hastings Russell features largely in his son John Ian's memoir, A Silver-Plated Spoon (World Books, 1959). Hastings is described as The loneliest man I ever knew, incapable of giving or receiving love, utterly self-centred and opinionated. He loved birds, animals, peace, monetary reform, the park and religion. In conjunction with his father, Hastings Russell managed to tie up the family fortunes in a way that made it extremely difficult for his son and heir to access the property.