29 MARCH 1957, Page 7

A BOOK ON the Russian Revolution by Sir Robert Bruce

Lockhart (The Two Revolutions, Phoenix House, 10s. 6d.) is something of an event. Sir Robert was a splendid example of those atypical geniuses who luckily for us lurk, suspect as eccentrics, in the otherwise disciplined appara- tuses of our civil and military life. When unforeseen crises occur and the routine minds are unable to cope, such men come into their own. If Sir Robert's advice had been heeded when he was Consul in Moscow during the First World War there might have been no Russian Revolu- tion. But he was too young—barely thirty even when he returned in 1918 to that astonishing attempt to clear up the mess which he has re- counted so outstandingly in his Memoirs of a British Agent. His new book, which I strongly recommend, is a short, clear and fascinating account of events up to and including the Bolshevik Revolution.