Episode 406: Rogue Agent

Robert Bruce Lockhart was at various times in his life a diplomat, a conspirator, an gatherer of intelligence, and a propagandist. He was always a maverick, a charmer, a bit of a cad with a touch of the bounder, and a devotee of the high life when he could afford it, and often when he could not. In his busy life he ran a Malaya rubber plantation; served as a diplomat in Czarist Russia; and was first an interlocutor with and then a conspirator against the Bolshevik leaders of the early Soviet Union. After imprisonment and expulsion from the Soviet Union, he ricocheted about Europe as a journalist and memoirist, before ending up as head of the shadowy and creative Political Warfare Executive. Throughout his life he seemed to be an escapee from a John Buchan novel like The Thirty-Nine Steps, or Greemantle, albeit one with a much higher sex drive. With me to talk about Robert Bruce Lockhart is James Crossland, Professor of International History at Liverpool John Moores University, where he is co-director of the Centre for Modern and Contemporary History. His interests are in—among other things—terrorism, propaganda, the International Red Cross and the history of international humanitarian law. He was last on the podcast in Episode 353 to talk about his book The Rise of the Devils: Fear and the Origins of Modern Terrorism. His newest book is Rogue Agent: From Secret Plots to Psychological Warfare, the Untold Story of Robert Bruce Lockhart. Some related podcasts in the archive are Jonathan Schneer on the Lockhart Plot; Anna Reid on the Russian Civil War; and–well, I mentioned it, oddly enough–Ben Jones on the Jedburghs.