11 March 2005

ARTHUR RANSOME: SECRET AGENT – 2

I know it's not the most important issue facing the world, but the Guardian has a good piece here by Roland Chambers, who is writing a book on Ransome and the Bolsheviks. He explains the bizarre position of Ransome in the early years of Soviet Russia, when he worked for British intelligence and acted as a courier for the Bolsheviks while employed as a foreign correspondent by the Daily News and the Manchester Guardian, largely in terms of his falling in love with Trotsky's secretary, Evgenia Shelepina, whom he later married. I'll come back to this over the weekend when I've got some time.

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