Sir Bernard Pares, KBE, was an English historian and diplomat. During the First World War, he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry in Petrograd, Russia, where he reported political happenings to London and worked in propaganda. He returned to London as a professor of Russian history. He is most renowned for his various writings on Russia, particularly his standard textbook, A History of Russia (1926), which provided in-depth analysis of the revolutionary period. He was a frequent public speaker in the 1940s in support of Stalin's Soviet Union. Bernard Pares was one of 10 children born to Katharine (née Back) and John Pares. He had four brothers, George (Lancelot), Norman, Basil, and Howard, as well as five sisters, Alice, Ethel, Margaret, Constance, and May. His father was the son of Thomas Pares (1790-1866), a Member of Parliament for Leicester from 1818 to 1826. His mother was the sister of Admiral Sir George Back FRS (1796-1878), an adventurer and naturalist. They were an affluent family, and he inherited a sizable money that allowed him to live comfortably despite his low academic salary.
