Arthur Ransome Was A Secret Agent Essay, Research Paper

Swallows, Amazons and secret agentsAs the author of children’s classics such as Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome established himself as a literary favourite and earned a considerable fortune. But the one-time Observer journalist also led a double life as a British secret agent.Newly disclosed records have confirmed what his supporters had always denied: that Ransome spied on Bolshevik Russia for MI6, supplying valuable information on the Soviet leadership in the years after the revolution. Ransome, who was working as a foreign correspondent for The Observer and the Manchester Guardian in 1917, was always seen as a leftwinger who sympathised with Bolshevism. He even wrote a book in defence of the revolution. In fact, despite his closeness to Lenin and Trotsky, later even marrying Trotsky’s secretary, he was assigned the code number S76 by British intelligence. And he filed regular reports to his Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) paymasters who were working to crush communism. The revelations, which are based on the discovery of previously unknown personal papers, are certain to come as a shock to fans of Swallows and Amazons (1930), a children’s sailing adventure story set in the Lake District. But Stephen Dorril, author of MI6: 50 Years of Special Operations, said: ‘It’s good to have confirmation that Ransome was working for British intelligence because there has been widespread speculation about where his loyalties lay. Now we know for certain that he was not a traitor of any kind.’ Ransome was recruited into MI6 by another ostensibly left-wing journalist, Clifford Sharp, editor of the New Statesman . During the First World War he ran the British Propaganda Bureau (BPB) in Stockholm under the control of MI6, with the aim of penetrating Russian revolutionary groups. Ransome entered Russia early in 1919 and soon became friendly with the leading Bolsheviks. His SIS controller, a Major Scale, was assistant British military attaché in Stockholm. Ransome arranged with Scale that if things became too hot for him in Russia the Foreign Office should send an officer to the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs recalling him immediately. In a letter promoting himself to his SIS superior in London, Ernest Boyce, in 1919, Ransome wrote: ‘It seems to me to be blazing madness to have no one in Russia capable of getting first-hand news at the top. There’s no one else who can keep in such touch with affairs there as I can. I’m just as friendly with the leaders of other political parties in Russia as I am with the Bolsheviks.’ Ransome offered written reports if ‘it could be arranged beforehand how I address them to ensure they are reaching the right hands’. His offer was eagerly accepted. He returned to Britain with Trotsky’s secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina, who became his second wife in 1924. But he was still in touch with the SIS in 1922 when he sailed his yacht Racundra in the Baltic with Boyce, a voyage that he later recounted in his book, Racundra’s First Cruise. While there, the Foreign Office described him as ‘very radical’, but ‘a conscientious and intelligent journalist’. But after falling ill on the trip he was forced to return to opt for a quieter life in Britain, moving to his beloved Lake District where he got the idea for Swallows and Amazons. Diane Janes, of the Arthur Ransome Society, which has branches as far afield as America and Japan, admitted that the revelations ‘would come as a surprise to our members who only know him as a writer of children’s stories. But he was always much more than a children’s writer. He only started writing his Swallows and Amazons books when he was approaching middle age.’ One of his earlier books, a biography of Oscar Wilde, brought forth a libel action from Lord Alfred Douglas, who claimed that Ransome’s book had been responsible for Wilde’s disgrace. But the judgment went in Ransome’s favour. Neither Swallows and Amazons nor its follow-up, Swallowdale , was immediately successful. But in 1932 came Peter Duck, which established Ransome’s reputation with the young. He bought a large house in the Lake District called Hill Top, near Haverthwaite, with his earnings and lived there until his death in 1967 aged 83. Janes thought that the latest revelation was unlikely to damage Ransome’s reputation. ‘I think this can only ignite more interest in him,’ she said. Ransome is by no means the only British writer to have worked for the intelligence services: Christopher Marlowe, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene and Ian Fleming all did their bit for their country.