Sir Bernard Pares Russophile, Adventurer … Secret Agent

The role played by scholar, academic and adventurer Bernard Pares in Britain’s relationship with Imperial Russia and the signing of the Anglo-Russian Convention continues to be overlooked in popular history. This article explores the complex relationship between Pares’ groundwork for the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce in 1907, the British Russia Bureau during the First World…

United Russia Societies Association

Just weeks before Russia February Revolution swept Tsar Nicholas II from power, a crack team of Russian intelligence specialists, diplomats and Anglo-Russian Oligarchs pooled resources to form the United Russia Societies Association. As Britain pinned its hopes on the incoming Kerensky Government, Liberals and Conservatives In Britain looked forward to a whole new era in…

Harold Williams and the British Russian Bureau

A look at the respected Russian scholar, propagandist and multi-linguist, Harold Williams in the context of the first English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in January 1920. This article explores the relationship between Williams, Sir Bernard Pares, the United Russia Societies Association and the Anglo-Russian Bureau during the 1915-1919 period. Born…

George Shanks and the Protocols Matrix

On the 100th anniversary of the book being exposed as a forgery, a recent discovery I made in the archives in Dublin suggests that the 1920 British translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (The Jewish Peril) was not the work of ‘lone wolf’ anti-Semite George Shanks, but part of a sophisticated propaganda…

Secret Terrorist Societies Unearthed – Lloyd’s News May 9th 1920

As Toplis made his getaway north, Lloyd’s Sunday News reported that Scotland Yard were making progress with their investigation into a number of alleged anarchist groups infiltrating the higher echelons of British civil society. Police believed a ‘special order’ had been given by the new Bolshevik leaders in Moscow to ‘foment unrest’ on British Soil…