Zaghlul's memoirs were transcribed into legible Arabic script in the 1980s and 1990s by a team of scholars led by Abd al-Athim Ramadan. Yet, they have not been used very extensively in literature in English. Ramadan suggested that the memoirs were significant in revising the narrative of the 1919 revolution, notably the origin of party divisions and the involvement of militant activists from an early stage. These conclusions revise the Nasirist era critques of Zaghlul's collaboration with colonial authorities, his colonial liberal orientation. These critiques point to typical characteristics of the bourgeois revolutionary type. My reading of the memoirs suggests that we should see him as a bourgeois revolutionary. He was a reformist who sought a constitutional revolution of the type typical of the era from 1789 to 1917. It highlights his commitment to liberal constitutionalism, far short of what the Nasirist socialists or 1919 Watani nationalists envisaged, but far more than what colonial authorities and their 'liberal' partners were willing to conuntenance. British observers were haunted by the spectre of the 1917 revolution, some Egyptian radicals might have fouond inspiration in that revolution. It was not part of Zaghlul's calculations. He spoke not of 'revolution' but of a 'movement'. Conventional narratives that point to his autorcratic style of leadership and his resort to political violence are influenced by colonial critques, more fantasy than reality. The paper seeks a middle ground appreciation of Zaghlul's politics in fidelity with the evidence and the historical period, indicating that the various stages and processes of the revolution were determined by his liberal constitutionalism.