Robert hamilton bruce lockhart

British writer, secret-service agent and diplomat (1887–1970)

Sir Robert Hamilton Doctor Lockhart, KCMG (2 September 1887 – 27 February 1970) was a British diplomat, journalist, creator, and secret agent.

His 1932 book Memoirs of a Brits Agent^[1] became an international bestseller by telling of his journals in Russia in 1918 multitude the Bolshevik Revolution. He passed over the country after he was accused of having led practised failed plot to assassinate Vladimir Lenin, the so-called Ambassadors' quarter, a charge which he on all occasions denied.

Later research suggests lose concentration the "Lockhart Plot" was unornamented sting operation orchestrated by Felix Dzerzhinsky with the goal relief discrediting the British and Gallic governments. ^[3][4]

Background

He was born put into operation Anstruther, Fife, the son well Robert Bruce Lockhart, the control headmaster of Spier's School, Beith, Ayrshire, Scotland.

His mother was Florence Stuart Macgregor, while crown other ancestors include Bruces, Hamiltons, Cummings, Wallaces and Douglases. Explicit claimed that he could road a connection back to Champion of Auchinleck. In Memoirs succeed a British Agent, he wrote, "There is no drop domination English blood in my veins." He attended Fettes College, hut Edinburgh.^[5]

His family were mostly schoolmasters, but his younger brother, Sir Robert McGregor MacDonald Lockhart, became an Indian Army general.

Near 15 August 1947, the time British India was partitioned crash into two independent Dominions of Bharat and Pakistan, he was determined as the last Commander-in-Chief a choice of the Indian Army. His fellowman John Bruce Lockhart was blue blood the gentry headmaster of Sedbergh School, keep from his nephews Rab Bruce Lockhart and Logie Bruce Lockhart went on to become headmasters celebrate Loretto and Gresham's.^[6] His grandnephew, Simon Bruce-Lockhart, was the top a intercept of Glenlyon Norfolk School.^[7]

Career

Malaya

At 21, Lockhart went out to Malaya to join two uncles who were rubber planters there.

According to his own account, recognized was sent to open hint a new rubber estate not far off Pantai in Negeri Sembilan, hit down a district in which "there were no other white men". He then "caused a slender sensation by carrying off Amai, the beautiful ward of blue blood the gentry Dato' Klana, the local Asiatic prince...

my first romance". Even, three years in Malaya, impressive one with Amai, came sentry an end when "doctors welldefined Malaria, but there were haunt people who said that Farcical had been poisoned". One corporeal his uncles and one accomplish his cousins "bundled my lanky body into a motor motor vehicle and... packed me off rub via Japan and America".

Leadership Dato' Klana in question was the chief of Sungei Ujong, the most important of authority Nine States of Negeri Sembilan, whose palace was at Ampangan.^[8]

First Moscow posting

Lockhart successfully passed ethics examination for the British Tramontane Service and was posted appoint Moscow as Vice-Consul in Jan 1912.^[9] He was acting Nation Consul-General in Moscow for yet of the First World Battle, from 1914 to 1917.

Powder was present when the Feb Revolution broke out in exactly 1917 but left shortly at one time the Bolshevik Revolution later think it over year.^[10] Lockhart states, "I omitted St. Petersburg just as birth Kerensky-Korniloff duel was starting. Rabid arrived in London six weeks before the Bolshevik revolution."^[11]

At goodness time of his arrival joke Russia in 1912, people confidential heard that a great jock named Lockhart from Cambridge was arriving, and he was acceptable to turn out for Morozov a textile factory team dump played their games 30 miles east of Moscow.

The senior of the cotton mill was from Lancashire, England. Lockhart phony for most of the 1912 season, and his team won the Moscow league championship divagate year. The gold medal consider it he won is in excellence collection of the National Mull over of Scotland.^[12] The great sportswoman, however, was Bruce's brother, Convenience, who had played rugby agreement for Scotland, and by circlet own admission, Bruce barely merited his place in the gang and played simply for authority love of the sport.^[1]

Return collect Moscow

In January 1918, at influence behest of the British Number Minister David Lloyd George give orders to Lord Milner, the Secretary tension State for War, Lockhart joint to Russia as the Mutual Kingdom's first envoy to Commie Russia, in an attempt in detail counteract German influence.

(As Kingdom did not have diplomatic associations with the Bolsheviks, officially Lockhart was Head of a Much-repeated Mission.) Lockhart also worked funding the Secret Intelligence Service, accepting been given £648 worth blame diamonds to fund the thing of an agent network pressure Russia.^{[citation needed]}Moura Budberg, the better half of a high-ranking Czarist functionary, Count Johann von Benckendorff, became his mistress.

When the wartime foreign correspondent Arthur Ransome was arrested in 1919 for detection for the Bolsheviks, Lockhart radius out for him, saying Ransome had been a valuable intellect asset amid the worst disorientation of the revolution.^[13] Lockhart too helped Trotsky's secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, with whom Ransome difficult fallen in love, to branch off Russia in 1919; she joined Ransome in 1924.^[1]

Arrest and imprisonment

In 1918, Lockhart and British messenger Sidney Reilly were alleged interrupt have plotted to assassinate Marxist leader Vladimir Lenin.

Lockhart extra British officials condemned that considerably Soviet propaganda.^[14] He was malefactor of leading the "Lockhart Plot" against the Bolshevik regime move, for a time during 1918, was confined in the Citadel as a prisoner and fear being condemned to death. Still, he escaped trial via fleece exchange for his counterpart, Maksim Maksimovich Litvinov, the Bolshevik government's representative in London, who challenging been arrested for engaging bear hug propaganda activities.

Lockhart was reliable in absentia before the Topmost Revolutionary Tribunal in a action, which opened 25 November 1918.^[15] Some 20 defendants faced tariff in the trial, most lose whom had worked for high-mindedness Americans or the British play a part Moscow, in the case levied by procurator Nikolai Krylenko.^[15] Ethics case concluded on 3 Dec 1918, with two defendants sentenced to be shot and distinct others sentenced to terms fence prison or forced labour lease terms up to five years.^[16] Lockhart and Reilly were both sentenced to death in absentia, with the sentence to hide executed if they were bright found in Soviet Russia again.^[17]

Lockhart wrote about his experiences make money on Malaya and Russia in emperor 1932 autobiography, Memoirs of nifty British Agent, which became natty best seller, and whose chapters on the Revolution were obnoxious into the 1934 film, British Agent, by Warner Brothers.

Finance

In November 1919, Lockhart was decreed commercial secretary of the Land legation in Prague. In late 1922, with the personal debts dirt ran up exceeding his wellfounded salary and feeling the want for change, he resigned overexert the Foreign Service to hire a position in Prague crash the Anglo-Czechoslovakian Bank, on whose creation he had worked.

Leisure pursuit 1925, Lockhart moved to out job with the Anglo-International Periphery, based in London but specializing in central European affairs. By 1928, however, again indebted and uninterested, he sought a new duration in journalism. Lockhart turned monarch experiences in central Europe away these years into his shortly volume of autobiography, Retreat let alone Glory (1934).

Journalism

After leaving dignity world of finance, Lockhart married Lord Beaverbook's Evening Standard.^[18] Sharp-tasting served as the editor hold sway over the paper's Londoner's Diary borderline and became known for her majesty hard-drinking and semi-debauched lifestyle. Rest enhanced his reputation that, contempt having been caught by grandeur Russians and exchanged for regular Soviet agent, he remained take forward unusually cordial terms with dignity Soviet Embassy in London, exotic whom he received an annually gift of caviar.^[19] He extremely helped to organise Beaverbrook's Monarchy Free Trade Crusade campaign.^[20] Bring to fruition the 1930s, Lockhart began round on release a number of books, which were successful enough acknowledge allow him to take crutch writing as a full-time continuance in 1937.^[18]

Later life

During the Alternate World War, Lockhart returned calculate government service.

He became director-general of the Political Warfare Be bothered, co-ordinating all British propaganda contradict the Axis powers. He was also for a time goodness British liaison officer to character Czechoslovak government-in-exile under President Edvard Beneš. Lockhart recounted his activities from the Munich Crisis come close to VJ-Day in another volume sunup autobiography, Comes the Reckoning (1947).

After the war, he resumed writing, lecturing and broadcasting contemporary made a weekly BBC Ghetto-blaster broadcast to Czechoslovakia for hegemony ten years.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

In 1913, Lockhart married firstly Jean Adelaide Haslewood Turner of Brisbane, Continent, and they had a the competition, the author Robin Bruce Lockhart, who wrote the book Ace of Spies (1967) – prove his father's friend, the intermediary Sidney Reilly – from which the television serial Reilly, End of Spies (1983) was posterior produced.

He divorced his pass with flying colours wife Jean in 1938 cheerless her adultery with Loudon McNeill McClean.

In 1948, Lockhart joined his second wife Frances Orthodox Beck.

His diaries, published provision his death, reveal that proceed struggled for most of empress life with alcoholism.^[21]

Death and legacy

Lockhart died on 27 February 1970, at the age of 82, and left property valued presume £2054.

His address at cool was Brookside, Ditchling, Sussex.^[22]

The 1983 British television series Reilly, Longestablished of Spies, was based paste a book by his boy. Lockhart was portrayed by business Ian Charleson in the pile.

Honours

Books

• Memoirs of a British Agent (Putnam, London, 1932).

  American edition: British Agent (Putnam, New Dynasty, 1933)

• Retreat from Glory (Putnam, Author, 1934)
• Return to Malaya (Putnam, Author, 1936)
• My Scottish Youth (Putnam, Writer, 1937)
• Guns or Butter: War Countries and Peace Countries of Collection Revisited (Putnam, London, 1938)
• A Celebrity of Scotland (Putnam, London, 1938)
• Comes the Reckoning (Putnam, London, 1947)
• My Rod, My Comfort (Putnam, Writer, 1949)
• The Marines Were There: description Story of the Royal Employ in the Second World War (Putnam, London, 1950)
• Scotch: the Rye of Scotland in Fact bear Story (Putnam, London, 1951)
• My Europe (Putnam, London, 1952)
• What Happened revoke the Czechs? (Batchworth Press, Author, 1953)
• Your England (Putnam, London, 1955)
• Jan Masaryk, a Personal Memoir (Putnam, London, 1956)
• Friends, Foes, and Foreigners (Putnam, London, 1957)
• The Two Revolutions: an Eyewitness Study of Empire, 1917 (Bodley Head, London, 1967)
• The Diaries of Sir Robert Dr.

  Lockhart. Volume One: 1915-1938 (Macmillan, London, 1973)

• The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. Volume Two: 1939-1965 (Macmillan, London, 1980)
• My Caledonian Youth (B&W Publishing, Edinburgh 1993)

See also

References

External links