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Victor Korolev

The Life and Surprising Adventures of Archibald Kerr, British Diplomat

Historical novel

© Korolev Victor, autor, 2020

© Publishing "Academizdat", 2020

From the Author

I have always been interested in the line that the author is allowed to cross in historical books, when he writes how everything happened, what exactly the characters of his work said. This line between fiction and speculation occupies me today. For detective or romance novels, this is not so important. And for historical novels it is very important.

As an author, it gives me great pleasure to tell the unknown about people who have left a noticeable mark in history. Such people very many, and here is know about them most often very few. And so it does not matter, in my opinion, what and how the characters say, what they wear and what they ride. These are details. And much more important are their actions, their difficult life path with all its repetitions.

A writer is not a historian. It doesn't work with sources. His task is to penetrate into the soul of his hero, see the world through his eyes, and then tell about what he saw. And not to lie at the same time, not to invent what was not and could not be. This is necessary if you write about a person not just real, but significant, known in his time.

I wanted to tell you about the British diplomat Archibald Kerr, who did a lot for Russia. He represented Britain in fifteen different countries. From 1942 to 1946 he was Ambassador to the USSR. I was very surprised to learn that there is no book about this interesting man in Russian.

Moreover – and in English there is only one: Donald Gillies. “Radical Diplomat: The Life of Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, Lord Inverchapel, 1882–1951”.

It was published twenty years ago, has survived several editions, but today it is somehow forgotten.

The author of this English book faithfully, observing the chronology, described the vicissitudes of life of his hero. He had access to the diplomat's personal archives and diaries, and he cited hundreds of his letters. And only rarely commented on them and expressed his opinion about certain events. This is a very thorough work of the historian. His book cannot be called a work of art. But her help for the novel was enormous.

I would not like, of course, to idealize the hero of my novel, but I am very impressed with his views on the war. Archibald Kerr volunteered for the front as a private soldier, although service in the Foreign Office gave him reservations. And there, in the trenches of the First World War, he realized an important truth: war is the most terrible thing on earth. Only those who know how to negotiate – diplomats – can stop this evil.

Archibald Kerr was an excellent diplomat. One of the best in the twentieth century – now that I've read everything about him, I'm sure of it. Therefore, a novel was born about the life and amazing adventures of such an extraordinary person.

Instead of prologue

Thoughts about the hero, about which at first little was known