- R. H. Bruce Lockhart
Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart KCMG (
2 September 1887 -27 February ,1970 ), was ajournalist ,author ,secret agent , British diplomat inMoscow , and later inPrague , and footballer.Background
Lockhart was born in
Anstruther ,Fife ,Scotland , the son of Robert Bruce-Lockhart, the first headmaster of Speir's School, Beith, Ayrshire, Scotland. His mother was a Macgregor, while his other ancestors include Bruces, Hamiltons, Cummings, Wallaces and Douglases. He also claimed he could trace a connection back to Boswell of Auchinleck. He often boasted, "There is no drop of English blood in my veins."His family were mostly schoolmasters. His brother John Harold Bruce Lockhart was the headmaster of
Sedbergh School , while his nephews Rab Bruce Lockhart andLogie Bruce Lockhart went on to become headmasters of Loretto and Gresham's.Lockart went to school himself at
Fettes College inEdinburgh . [ [http://www.fettes.com/history/distinguished.htm Distinguished Old Fettesians] ]Career
After a brief failed attempt at being a rubber planter in Malaya, Lockhart joined the British Foreign Service and was posted to
Moscow as Vice-Consul.At the time of his arrival in Russia, people had heard that a great footballer named Lockhart from Cambridge was arriving, and he was invited to turn out for Morozov a textile factory team that played their games 30 miles east of Moscow - the owner of the cotton mill was from Lancashire, England. Lockhart played for most of the 1912 season and won the Moscow league championship that year. The great player however was Robert's brother, John, who had played rugby union for Scotland, and by his own admission Robert barely deserved his place in the team and played simply for the love of the sport. The Russians did not know the difference between Association Football and Rugby Football.
Lockhart was Acting British Consul-General in Moscow when the first Russian Revolution broke out in early 1917, but left shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution of October that year.
He soon returned to Russia at the behest of Prime Minister
Lloyd George andLord Milner as the United Kingdom's first envoy to the Bolsheviks (Russia) in January of 1918 in an attempt to counteract German influence.Lockhart was asked in March 1918 to persuade the new Soviet government to allow a Japanese army onto Soviet territory to fight
Germany on the Eastern Front. He was unsuccessful in this endeavour.In 1918, Lockhart and fellow British agent,
Sidney Reilly , were dramatically implicated in a plot to assassinateBolshevik leaderVladimir Lenin . He was accused of plotting against the Bolshevik regime and, for a time during 1918, was confined in theKremlin as a prisoner and condemned to death. However, his life was spared in an exchange of "secret agents" for the Russian diplomatMaksim Maksimovich Litvinov .He later wrote about his experiences in his autobiographical book, "Memoirs of a British Agent" (1934).
Lockhart was also a friend of the renowned occultist,
Aleister Crowley .During
World War II , Lockhart became director-general of thePolitical Warfare Executive , co-ordinating all British propaganda against the enemy. He was also for a time the British liaison officer to theCzechoslovak government-in-exile under PresidentEdvard Beneš .After the war, he resumed his writing career, as well as lecturing and broadcasting, and had a weekly
BBC broadcast toCzechoslovakia for over 10 years.Lockhart died in 1970 at the age of 83, but tales of his adventures in Moscow have recently returned to the public eye when Scottish professional footballer
Garry O'Connor , made the move to Russian football club Lokomotiv Moscow in March 2006.Honours
*Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, 1943
Books
*"Memoirs of a British Agent" (Putnam, London, 1934)
*"Retreat from Glory" (Putnam, London, 1934)
*"Return to Malaya" (Putnam, London, 1936)
*"My Scottish Youth" (Putnam, London, 1937)
*"Guns or Butter: War countries and peace countries of Europe revisited" (Putnam, London, 1938)
*"A Son of Scotland" (Putnam, London, 1938)
*"What Happened to the Czechs?"
*"Comes the Reckoning" (Putnam, London, 1947)
*"My Rod, My Comfort" (Putnam, London, 1949)
*"The Marines Were There: the Story of the Royal Marines in the Second World War" (Putnam, London, 1950)
*"Scotch: the Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story" (Putnam, London, 1951)
*"My Europe" (Putnam, London, 1952)
*"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 Russia, 1917" (Bodley Head, London)
*"The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart" (St Martin's Press, London, 1974)In TV drama
*See "
Reilly, Ace of Spies "ee also
*
Logie Bruce Lockhart (son of R. H. Bruce Lockhart's brother, J. H. Bruce Lockhart)
*Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, Baron Bruce-Lockhart (grandson of R. H. Bruce Lockhart's brother, J. H. Bruce Lockhart)
*Dugald Bruce Lockhart (great-great-nephew)References
*"The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart" (St Martin's Press, London, 1974)
External links
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/4764284.stm/ Story from BBC News]
* [http://www.fifedirect.org.uk/Anstruther Anstruther on FifeDirect]
* [http://www.gwpda.org/wwi-www/BritAgent/BATC.htm BRITISH AGENT by R. H. Bruce Lockhart]
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