An even earlier example of the “old-school-tie brigade in knots over Russia” (Letters, 19 November) is that of Arthur Ransome, who reported the Russian revolution for the Daily News. With the MI6 code name S76, he shared a flat with the Bolshevik chief of propaganda but attracted the attention of the establishment by his opposition to allied intervention in the Russian civil war.
On his return to London he was detained and questioned by MI5 on suspicion of treason. After the war he went back to Moscow as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian and, once married to Trotsky’s personal secretary Evgenia Petrovna Shepelina, returned to England to live a double life as Guardian correspondent and author of Swallows and Amazons, no doubt remaining under surveillance the while.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
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