This is a book on the Russian Revolution with a difference. It unites the formal history and the individual memoir by telling the story of 1917 in the words of eyewitnesses who saw history in the making. They witnessed two revolutions - the overthrow of Tsarism in March and the Bolshevik seizure of power in November - and described them with an immediacy that later accounts do not always achieve. These witnesses are not Russian, but British and American: as outsiders, they could see more of the game. They include diplomats, newspaper correspondents, the military, businessmen, even the occasional English governess. There are also adventurous young American radicals like John Reed (author of "Ten Days that Shook the World") and his wife Louise Bryant, whose exploits inspired the film "Reds". Prominent among the correspondents were Arthur Ransome (who married Trotsky's secretary and later wrote such children's classics as "Swallows and Amazons") and Harold Williams, whose wife was a leading Russian politician. Their journalism has been unread since 1917, while many other eye - witness accounts are published here for the first time.