A sailor with strange credentials
Arthur Ransome remains an enigma. The facts of his life are well known since Hugh Brogan's excellent biography. Born in 1884, the son of a Leeds University history professor, he started work in London as a literary critic, produced well-regarded studies of Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, and moved into journalism. In 1913 he went to Russia, learned Russian and published a book of folklore. In 1915 he was back in Russia, working for the Daily News. He reported the October Revolution from the inside, sympathising with the Bolsheviks. Escaping an unhappy first marriage, he lived with and later married Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, Trotsky's secretary.
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Geoffrey WheatcroftOxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2001-2004, edited by Lawrence Goldman
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Simon Leigh
August 29th, 2008 5:45pmWhat a wanky piece of journalism.
Take a closer look at the man, and his legacy as a journalist and an author, before putting forward such an uninformed and slanted review.
Arthur Ransome's literary works have a great deal more substance than you give him credit for. I am proud to introduce his work to my children, some 80 years on.