Book Reviews

THE LAST ENGLISHMAN:

The double life of Arthur Ransome

Roland Chambers

Arthur Ransome is best known in England for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books, which tell of the school-holiday adventures of children sailing, fishing and camping. But before he wrote them, Ransome had another life. He was a spy - though for who is not clear, since both the Soviets and MI6 employed him and accused him of being a double agent in equal measure.

In 2005, 40 years after he died, MI5 released its files on Ransome. These revealed an adventurer who was superb at describing events around him but not so hot at interpreting them. As a journalist for the Manchester Guardian, he was at the centre of the Russian Revolution and close to both Lenin and Trotsky, marrying the latter's private secretary. But he continued to deny the Soviet Red Terror, even as it was unleashed around him.

Few Englishmen had such intimate access to the Bolshevik leaders, and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) thought they had recruited him as their inside man. But to this day it's not clear whether he also spied for the Soviets or which side he really preferred. Chambers concludes that the chapters on Ransome's Russian escapades in his unpublished autobiography were a poor fiction...unlike his superb children's books.

Faber & Faber, 20 pounds