James Crossland

Historian Professor James Crossland tells the story of the unconventional British spy Robert Bruce Lockhart who conspired to bring down the communists after the Russian Revolution and later waged a war of ideas against the Fascists and Nazis.

Crossland’s Rogue Agent is the first biography of Bruce Lockhart. He tells a story of scandal, subversion and deception in an age of war, revolution and extremism. He describes a man who was sometimes brilliant but always flawed. Bruce Lockhart was a gifted writer and notorious charmer with a love of wine, women and song. He was Britain’s unofficial agent in Russia, tasked with befriending Lenin and Trotsky and conspiring to bring down the regime. The disastrous outcome of this “Lockhart Plot” led to its author’s imprisonment and deportation to Britain, and the destruction of allied intelligence networks across the Soviet Union. Lockhart nevertheless continued to work with British intelligence, became a best-selling author and right-hand to the all-powerful press magnate Lord Beaverbrook, worked as a propagandist to fight the rise of fascism in Europe and, in 1942, was tasked by Winston Churchill with running his top secret psychological warfare campaign against the Third Reich.

Crossland is a professor of international history at Liverpool John Moores University and the author of Rogue Agent: from Secret Plots to Psychological Warfare, the Untold Story of Robert Bruce Lockhart and The Rise of Devils: Fear and the Origins of Modern Terrorism.