Henderson has woven his narrative out of a brilliant miscellany of archival sources, with crucial finds in the Hoover Institution's records of the Okhrana, or political police.

Times Literary Supplement

Henderson, a former Russian curator at the British Library, knows everything there is to know about Lenin's love affair with the BM, and tells it all. This is a level of detailed Leniniana seldom encountered since the demise of the Soviet Union, but even those diligent Soviet researchers who used to track Lenin's every move and hour didn't know the BM [British Museum] as Henderson does. It's what gives his book its charm.

London Review of Books

One hundred fifty years after Lenin's birth, Henderson's book does something to bring him back to life.

The Jacobin

Henderson's revelatory book captures the atmosphere of a time of Jewish idealism preceding that of the horrors of the Gulag.

The Jewish Chronicle

Robert Henderson's archival snapshots put human flesh on the intellectual and political bones of a figure who remains either revered or hated to this day… [the book] captures the atmosphere of Edwardian London and brings to life many of the players – with its wealth of photographs – in the early moves of a game that would indeed change the world.

Morning Star

Henderson's book is a very welcome contribution to understanding the role that time spent in London played in the intellectual and practical development of the Russian revolutionary left, especially that of Lenin and his closest comrades. It provides a vivid sense of place and a lot of the human context to a crucially important period in Lenin's political life.

Counterfire