Memoirs of a British Agent by R H Bruce Lockhart

Memoirs of a British Agent 

Brought on same abortive advent calendar hunt as Operation SeaLion 

This is a really engaging book written by someone with a fascinating story to tell.
It paints a vivid picture of the diplomatic world in the early years of the last century and then uses that as the backdrop for the account of the Russia Revolution and the folly of British military intervention.

It reveals the significant part played by the personality and personal relations of national representatives in relationships between nations - true then but I suspect equally true today. It also shows the revolution populated with a colourful array of people acting often to different ends which is a useful insight as we tend to view the Soviet Russia as monochrome.

There are one of two things that are less prasie worthy in particular the way that a point is made of telling us whenever someone is Jewish which I am not quiet sure how to process - the book is 80 years old and so we need to reading with a view to its own time and place and there is nothing explicitly anti-Semitic, an example being his description of the Central Executive Committee as "a motley gathering of about on hundred and fifty intellectuals with a strong predominance of Jews." so at one level it is a just a statement of fact but somehow you feel that you are meant to read something more in it, which makes me a little uncomfortable.