This is a new biography of the New Zealand–born linguist and foreign correspondent Dr. Harold Williams (1876–1928), who worked in Russia for a number of British papers from 1904 until 1921. The only previous account of his life, Cheerful Giver: The Life of Harold Williams (London, 1935), was written by his wife, Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, a member of the Constitutional Democrats’ Central Committee. While Tyrkova's memoir/biography presents an almost hagiographic image of Williams, Charlotte Alston's account strays into the opposite direction. She notes that Williams's “fierce involvement with the anti-Bolshevik cause and his use of his journalism to further this campaign generated violent criticism” (3) and cites Philip Knightley, who described Williams as “the worst of the war correspondents” (4, 155–56); Arthur Ransome, who disapproved of Williams's dispatches; and Maxim Litvinov, the Bolshevik Commissar for Foreign Affairs, who referred to Williams as “Russia's greatest enemy” (3). So a politically correct “Pro and Contra” tone is set, wherein Williams's special qualities and achievements are on the whole belittled, while his failings are emphasized. This is reinforced by some selective quotes from his dispatches that demonstrate his subjective perception of events where “imagery replaced analysis and feeling replaced fact” (127) and became “jingoistic” (155). Even Williams's extraordinary linguistic abilities are questioned: “There is little surviving evidence” regarding his fluency in the “thirty to fifty languages” that it was claimed he knew by the end of his life (3). Alston does give her due to comments that are complimentary to Williams, though on a personal and not on a professional level.

The book is a reworked PhD thesis awarded by the University of Lancaster (where Alston also completed her undergraduate degree in history) and reflects the able supervision of David Saunders and Patrick Salmon. In just under 200 pages it covers, in the first two chapters, Williams's early life in New Zealand until 1900, his career in journalism from 1900 to 1914, and some of the newspapers that he worked for, including the Manchester Guardian, the Morning Post, the Daily Chronicle, and The Times; chapter 3 is entitled “Britain, Russia, War and Revolution, 1907–1917” and focuses on his contribution to the movement toward rapprochement in the World War I period in the context of Anglo-Russian relations, while chapter 4 deals with his activities after the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, including the campaign for Allied intervention in the Russian civil war. The final chapter reviews his years with The Times as leader writer and foreign editor from 1921 to 1928. This is followed by extensive notes and a bibliography.

Alston makes good use of previously published material as well as known archival sources held in the United States, Britain, and New Zealand. Her special contribution is a study of relevant Foreign Office papers at the National Archives (though she makes no references to papers from the Political Intelligence files). These reveal the extent (or lack of it) of Williams's voluntary involvement in the Anglo-Russian Bureau and the Allied Propaganda Committee in Petrograd, as well as the Intervention. Alston's framework of reference appears to exclude the use of Russian sources (could this be due to difficulties with the language?), though she does refer in passing to some published police files on Williams held in Moscow.

While she explores aspects of Anglo-Russian relations in some detail, there is less depth in her analysis of how the complexity and range of revolutionary events were elucidated in Williams's reports and editorials. For example, a perusal of records held at The Times archives demonstrates that Williams wrote some 900 editorials for The Times between June 1921 and 1928, yet in her chapter on The Times (171–94) Alston refers in passing to some thirty-five, of which only one is from 1921, the crucial year of famine and displacement. When she does cite from his dispatches she includes the date of publication, but not the date on which the article was written and telegraphed (as is done in Harvey Pitcher's book Witnesses of the Russian Revolution [1994]). This would have made it easier to relate the reports to actual events in Russia dated according to the Julian calendar.

Alston accuses Williams of sympathizing with the Kadets and their cause that “limited his appraisal of Russian politics” (62). However, she does not consider censorship in Russia, his attempts to circumvent it, and the limiting editorial policies of newspapers he worked for. Williams covered other parties and factions, some illegal at various times, such as the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats, many of whose members he knew personally—such as Savinkov, Chernov, and so on, various Mensheviks (e.g., Tsereteli, Plekhanov), and also some Bolsheviks like M. Chkheidze (though none of these names are even mentioned here)—and he interviewed Kerensky and Trotsky. Alston also claims that Williams “never actually met Lenin or saw him address a meeting” (123). As evidence she cites pages 89–90 and page 190 of Tyrkova's biography The Cheerful Giver and also Harvey Pitcher. However, there is nothing pertaining to Lenin on pages 89–90, while Pitcher cites the same page 190 of The Cheerful Giver. Tyrkova had her own agenda and had written that Williams would sometimes say with a guilty air: “What do you think? perhaps I ought to go and listen to Lenin?” (190) which in Russian implies that he had carried out that action before and might do so again. Williams certainly heard Lenin speak on a number of occasions and apparently also met him; their respective wives were school friends. Williams reported Lenin's speeches on Tuesday, 4/17 April to the Joint Meeting of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks at the Taurida Palace the day after Lenin returned to Petrograd in the “sealed train” (telegraphed on Wednesday, 5/18 April). From then on (whenever Williams was not on leave and Lenin was not “underground”) he was featured frequently in Williams's telegrams to the Daily Chronicle (of which there remain copies in Williams's archives that include his short private messages to the editor). Williams is likely to have heard Lenin speak already in 1906 and 1907 following Lenin's return to Russia in November 1905, though he may not have been in a position to report it. Other commentators too found listening to Lenin to be a strain—for instance, N. N. Sukhanov, a member of the Executive Committee of the first Soviet (The Russian Revolution: A Personal Record, ed. and trans. Joel Carmichael [Oxford, 1955], and Zapiski o Revoliutsii, originally published in Russian in seven volumes [1922]).

Alston's book contains much useful detail and reads almost like a summary of selected information on Williams, though there are some minor inaccuracies, such as the dating of Williams's speech to the British Institute of International Affairs, which Alston says took place in 1918 but which was actually on 7 December 1920. On the odd occasion, when quoting she identifies the author of an account as having stated something when in fact the author was quoting another source. Nevertheless, Alston's study is a useful biography (as opposed to Tyrkova's memoir) on the life and work of Harold Williams.