Robin Bruce Lockhart

Robert Norman Bruce Lockhart (13 April 1920 – 20 February 2008), known as Robin, was a British journalist, stock broker, and author.

Not to be confused with Rab Bruce Lockhart.

Biography

Bruce Lockhart was the only son of British spy R. H. Bruce Lockhart and was educated at Eagle House School and the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. During the Second World War he served in British naval intelligence, and was stationed in Singapore, where he met and married his first wife, Peggy in 1942.[1] After the War he pursued a career in journalism, working for the Beaverbrook Press in London, Manchester and Glasgow. He later became a stock broker, while continuing to pursue his literary interests. He lived in Sussex and France.

Ace of Spies, Lockhart's book about the secret agent Sidney Reilly, was published in 1967, and Troy Kennedy Martin adapted it into the television serial Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983), starring Sam Neill as the title character, with Ian Charleson as his father. The book was republished in 1984 as Reilly: Ace of Spies.

Bruce Lockhart converted to Roman Catholicism. His book about the Carthusians, Half-way to Heaven (1985), came from his own experiences as a lay guest at St Hugh's Charterhouse, Parkminster.[2]

In 1995 he wrote a Preface to a new edition of his father's Scotch: The Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story. Lockhart was then living in Hove, Sussex. He said he had done much fishing in Sutherland, in the River Oykel, Loch Stack, and Loch Craggie, and that after fishing he found that the local Glenmorangie whisky brought "a joyous, happy peace". A great-great-grandfather had owned the Balmenach distillery, and about 1980 he had himself served on a Which? panel, tasting malt whiskies.[3] The ancestor in question was James McGregor, who in 1824 had taken out a licence for a distillery he had been working illicitly.[4]

Lockhart was married three times and had one daughter by his first wife.

Lockhart died on 8 February 2008 in Brighton, Sussex.[5] Probate was granted in the name of "Lockhart, Robert Bruce".[6]

Books
  • Ace of Spies (1967), Hodder and Stoughton
    • Revised as: Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983), Futura, Macdonald & Co.
    • Revised as: Reilly: Ace of Spies (1992), Robin Clark
  • Half-way to Heaven: The Hidden Life of the Sublime Carthusians (London: Thames Methuen, 1985)
  • Reilly: The First Man (1987)
  • Listening to Silence: an Anthology of Carthusian Writings (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1997)
  • "O bonitas!" Hushed to silence: a Carthusian Monk (Salzburg: 2000)

Notes
  1. Thomas B. Allen, Declassified: 50 Top-Secret Documents That Changed History (Simon and Schuster, 2008) p. 109
  2. Dennis D. Martin, Fifteenth-century Carthusian reform: the world of Nicholas Kempf (1992), p. 5
  3. Robin Bruce Lockhart, Preface to 7th edition of Scotch: The Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story
  4. BALMENACH HISTORY at scotchwhisky.com
  5. Editor's note to Robert Bruce Lockhart, Scotch: The Whisky of Scotland in Fact and Story (Neil Wilson Publishing, 8th edition, 2012)
  6. "LOCKHART, ROBERT BRUCE died 18 December 2008, probate number 2984524" in Probate Index (England) for 2009



This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.