Alfred Knox
Sir Alfred William Fortescue Knox was a career British military officer and later a Conservative Party politician.Biography
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. A fluent speaker of Russian, he became a liaison officer to the Imperial Russian Army during First World War.
During the October Revolution in Russia he observed the Bolsheviks taking the Winter Palace on 25 October 1917.
During the Russian Civil War, he was the head of the British Mission and notional Chef d'Arrière of the White Army in Siberia under Admiral Kolchak. He barely intervened in the combat operations, as Kolchak was unwilling to listen to his advice and to accept demands about a Russian Constituent Assembly after the war.
In 1921 Knox published his memoirs, With the Russian Army: 1914-1917. In this book he also tells the story of heroine Elsa Brändström.
At the 1924 general election, he was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Wycombe, defeating the sitting Liberal MP Lady Terrington. He held his seat during the 1929 general election and through subsequent general elections, serving in the House of Commons until the 1945 general election. In 1934, Knox argued against Indian Independence by stating "India, diverse in races and creed and united only by Britain, is not ready for democracy." His parliamentary questions mainly concerned the Soviet Union and the threat of Hitler as well as the rearmament of Britain during the inter-war period. Knox remained a strong opponent of Communism throughout his career and following the Soviet invasion of Finland, campaigned to give military support to the Finns.
He died on 9 March 1964.In Fiction
Knox is depicted in the book August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as a somewhat troublesome attache as General Samsonov attempts to lead his army through East Prussia.
