When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, the U.S., Great Britain and France moved on several fronts to defeat them, including invasion and subversion from within. At the center of the latter was a young British diplomat, Robert Lockhart, who worked with the more notorious and mysterious “Ace of Spies,” Sidney Reilly. Historian Jonathan Schneer’s The Lockhart Plot sounds like a Robert Ludlum novel and could easily be transformed into a Hollywood movie—the true story includes sex and romance as well as intrigue, chase scenes and shoot outs. As a protagonist, Lockhart was amorous and impetuous, given to rebelling against conventional expectations but knuckling under in the end. He wanted Britain to negotiate with the Bolsheviks but accepted his orders and tried to kill their leaders.
Schneer accepted the challenge of writing a history where “accounts are all unreliable” and everyone involved had reason to either exaggerate or underplay his own role. The pages of The Lockhart Plot are replete with “it seems likely” and that phrase’s close cousin, “it is unlikely but not impossible.” Unusually literate for a contemporary historian, Schneer’s portraits of the central characters are lifelike as he examines motivations that include money and opportunity as well as duty and idealism. It’s a page turner.
