Dear Sir Oswald,
Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.
Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell
addendum:
The eldest son of Oswald and Cynthia was Nicholas, some of whose novels I love. Accident is good, and short, Hopeful Monsters is good, and long. He was “a harsh critic of his father” (Wikipedia).
A half-brother of Nicholas was Max, who was president of the FIA, the Formula One governing body, but is also remembered for this (from Wikipedia):
In 2008, Mosley won a court case (Mosley v News Group Newspapers) against the News of the World newspaper—which had reported his involvement in what it said was a Nazi-themed sex act involving five women—on the grounds that it had breached his privacy. Justice Eady ruled that, despite one of the attendees wearing a military uniform, there were no Nazi connotations to the orgy.
Max was the son of Oswald and Diana Mitford (one of the Mitford sisters and “a British fascist, aristocrat, writer and editor”), who married Oswald in 1936 (after divorcing Bryan Guinness, one of the heirs of the Guinness brewing fortune), at the home of Goebbels, with Hitler in attendance.
And Louis Mosley is currently CEO of Palantir UK.
Quite a family.