Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart was born in Anstruther, Fife, Scotland, the son of Robert Bruce Lockhart and Florence Stuart Macgregor. At age 21, he went to Malaya to open an additional rubber estate for two of his uncles who were rubber planters in the country. After three years, he was diagnosed with malaria, and returned to Scotland. He joined the Foreign Service and was stationed in Moscow as Vice-Consul. In 1913 he married Jean Haslewood Turner, daughter of Leonard Turner. He was Acting British Consul-General in Moscow when the first Russian Revolution broke out in early 1917. He left before the Bolshevik Revolution, but returned in 1918 to try to persuade the Soviet government to aid in fighting Germany, and was arrested and accused of plotting to assassinate Vladimir Lenin. He was sentenced to death, but was spared in a prisoner exchange. In 1932 he published a book, Memoirs of a British Agent, about his experiences in Moscow.

He published several memoirs in the period between the wars. Also during this time, in 1938, he and his wife divorced.

During World War II, he was director-general of the Political Warfare Executive, which produced British propaganda. He also served as the British liaison officer to the Czechoslovak government-in-exile under President Edvard Beneš. In 1943 he was invested as a Knight Commander, Order of St. Michael and St. George (K.C.M.G.).

After the war, he resumed his writing career. He was also a broadcaster with the BBC. In 1948 he married Frances Mary Beck, daughter of Maj.-Gen. E. A. Beck.

This was the author's third book. Just before the First World War, the author had lived in Malaya, and had been invalided back to Britain This account is of his return to Malaya some 25 years afte leaving, and his impressions of the country.