Sir Robert Bruce LockartReseñas

Memoir of travel, mainly throughout Eastern Europe, just before the outbreak of WW II. Much of it was more relevant in 1938, but the best bits are the author's meetings and impressions in Austria, three days after the Anschluss, and in Berlin - which are chilling.

Perhaps the most interesting book I've read all year.

Autobiography of a somewhat Bertie Wooster chap with a talent for languages and bonhomie, who finds himeself as a junior diplomat at the end of WWI. The first section is his escape from arbitrary execution as a spy by the Bolsheviks, commuted to exile because he knew how to make friends in high and low places. Then a few years in Central Europe, mostly Prague, as the old empire of Austria-Hungary is dismantled and reformed. Again, it's his talent for simply being likable that carries him so far.

The political observations are erudite and insightful, the characters are engaging such that we genuinely want things to work out well for them. As a view of Europe at its darkest, this gives strong hints as to what can happen at the worst, across all of WWII, the collapse of Jugoslavia and why that became so violent, and even some lessons as to why brexit is such a dreadful idea.

Now to read the rest of his books.

Interesting account of a British diplomat in Moscow and St. Petersburg during parts of 1917 and 1918 with insights into the chaos and cross-currents. He met many of the revolutionaries including Lenin and Trotsky, and also British agent Sydney Reilly, subject of the 1983 miniseries "Reilly, Ace of Spies", with Sam Neill and based on the book about Reilly written by Lockhart's son.

Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart was born in Anstruther, Fife, Scotland, the son of Robert Bruce Lockhart and Florence Stuart Macgregor. At age 21, he went to Malaya to open an additional rubber estate for two of his uncles who were rubber planters in the country. After three years, he was diagnosed with malaria, and returned to Scotland. He joined the Foreign Service and was stationed in Moscow as Vice-Consul. In 1913 he married Jean Haslewood Turner, daughter of Leonard Turner. He was Acting British Consul-General in Moscow when the first Russian Revolution broke out in early 1917. He left before the Bolshevik Revolution, but returned in 1918 to try to persuade the Soviet government to aid in fighting Germany, and was arrested and accused of plotting to assassinate Vladimir Lenin. He was sentenced to death, but was spared in a prisoner exchange. In 1932 he published a book, Memoirs of a British Agent, about his experiences in Moscow.

He published several memoirs in the period between the wars. Also during this time, in 1938, he and his wife divorced.

During World War II, he was director-general of the Political Warfare Executive, which produced British propaganda. He also served as the British liaison officer to the Czechoslovak government-in-exile under President Edvard Beneš. In 1943 he was invested as a Knight Commander, Order of St. Michael and St. George (K.C.M.G.).

After the war, he resumed his writing career. He was also a broadcaster with the BBC. In 1948 he married Frances Mary Beck, daughter of Maj.-Gen. E. A. Beck.

Described as 'A Classic Bestseller of our Times', the book was an immediate success when published, in demand at home and internationally. The author, born in 1887, opens with a brief description of his early life and describes his journey to Singapore to begin working in the rubber industry in Malaya in 1908. Just a few years later he is in Moscow and the bulk of the book describes his time as Acting Consul-General and, after a break, as Head of the British Mission to the Bolsheviks. He graphically describes his encounters with Lenin and Trotsky and his time in Loubianka prison. What a different world it was just one hundred or so years ago! Or was it?

Highly intriguing account by one of the footnote figures of the Russian Revolution. Lockhart was a consul in Moscow in the period just before and during the First World War, and in the first year or so of the Bolshevik period. He doesn't spare himself in this account, and notes the (multiple) mistakes he made, along with his indiscretions. But there are also some interesting observations, and a few what-ifs raised. It's clear from this account that the British Government was somewhat disorganized in its response to the October Revolution. Also interesting for its views on Trotsky and Lenin in their prime. Recommended.

I read the Folio Society edition printed in 2003 with the introduction and final chapter by the author's son.

Imagine running the British consulate in St Petersburg and then in Moscow during the time leading up to and during the communist take over. And during the surrender to Germany taking Russia out of WWI. Lockheart did just that while he was in his late 20s and early 30s. Fascinating tale and amazing how botched some of the allies efforts were to make things better in Russia. At the same time you feel so sad knowing that the success of the communists will end up resulting in the death of millions of their own countrymen.

Eye witness memoir of RHBH, as a young diplomat on his first overseas posting, in Russia during WWI and the cataclysmic events of the Russian Revolution. Arrested in 1918, in the wake of an attempt to assassinate Lenin, Bruce Lockhart is eventually freed and leaves Russia.½

He is, however, good-natured. His enthusiasm is infectious, his pride in the revolution unbounded. "We are only doing what you have done centuries ago, but we are trying to do it better - without the Napoleon and without the Cromwell. People call me a mad idealist, but thank God for the idealists in this world. And at that moment I was prepared to thank God with him.

R.H. Bruce Lockhart was a diplomat who was posted to Moscow before and during the Russian Revolution, and his book was a world-wide bestseller when it was published in 1932, as he had first-hand contact with the famous names of both revolutions and was almost executed for spying.

His father sent him to university in Germany in the hope that he would actually do some work (he thought his son would spend all his time
playing sport if he went to Oxford or Cambridge), which led to him becoming fluent in French and German. After a stint working for his uncle at tea-planting in Malaya (he came home almost dead of fever - or possibly poison - after a scandalous affair with a local Prince's ward), he took the Foreign Office exams for the consular service.

By 1912 he was Vice-Consul in pre-World War I Moscow, where most of the other British residents were Lancastrians working in the cotton industry. After another affair led to him being sent back to London, he was sent back to Russia when the first revolution broke out, with the futile task of trying to keep Russia in the war. He was friends with Kerensky, the idealistic leader of the first revolutionary government, whose hopes of a revolution without a Napoleon or Cromwell were crushed when the Bolsheviks took over after the second revolution. A truly fascinating book by a man who at times seems very critical and dismissive of others, but also sees his own flaws and errors of judgement.½

The derring-do, pathos, and incredible violence of early Bolshevik Russia are strikingly limned in this classic memoir. (As one blurb has it, "every page is alive." The style is very British, and all the more affectating for that.) The author, a rather romantic Scot, was truly Johnny on the spot in the midst of revolutionary chaos, and one of the few diplomats of the time who recognized the true staying power of the Bolshevik movement and its radical violence. Lots of bullets and romance!

This was the author's third book. Just before the First World War, the author had lived in Malaya, and had been invalided back to Britain This account is of his return to Malaya some 25 years afte leaving, and his impressions of the country.