Memoirs of a British agent

by Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart

Paper Book, 1950

Status

Available

Call number

920

Publication

Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1950.

Description

Jack and Annie are ready for their next fantasy adventure in the bestselling middle-grade series--the Magic Tree House! IT'S SINK OR SWIM for Jack and Annie when the Magic Tree House whisks them off to the middle of the ocean. Luckily, they find a mini-submarine on a coral reef. "Unluckily," they are about to meet a giant octopus and one very hungry shark. Will the dolphins save the day? Or are Jack and Annie doomed to be dinner? Visit the Magic Tree House website! MagicTreeHouse.com "From the Trade Paperback edition."

User reviews

LibraryThing member kencf0618
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
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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!
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LibraryThing member isabelx
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
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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.
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LibraryThing member DramMan
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.
LibraryThing member Chris_El
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
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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.
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LibraryThing member EricCostello
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)
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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.
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Language

Original publication date

1932

Local notes

538
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