Alfred Knox

Who was Alfred Knox?

Major-General Sir Alfred William Fortescue Knox was a career British military officer and later a Conservative Party politician.

Born in Ulster, he joined the British Army and was posted to India.

In 1911 General Knox was appointed the British Military Attaché in Russia, where he served as a spy. Anti-Semitic and a fluent speaker of Russian, he became a liaison officer to the Imperial Russian Army during First World War. He is depicted in the classic book 1914 by Solzhenitsyn as a somewhat troublesome attache as General Samsonov attempts to lead his army through East Prussia. During the October Revolution in Russia he observed the Bolsheviks taking the Winter Palace on 25 October 1917:

"The garrison of the Winter Palace originally consisted of about 2,000 all told, including detachments from yunker and ensign schools, three squadrons of Cossacks, a company of volunteers and a company from the Women's Battalion.

The garrison had dwindled owing to desertions, for there were no provisions and it had been practically starved for two days. There was no strong man to take command and to enforce discipline.