Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick

In 2005, Britain's National Archives released files showing that Ransome was suspected to be a Bolshevik sympathizer and double agent. An author's note, a time line, and Secret Service files are appended to inform readers about facts behind the spy thriller elements.Īrthur Ransome was not just the real-life author of the classic Swallows and Amazons novels he was also a collector of Russian fairy tales and a journalist - avocations that led to his position with Britain's Daily News as Russian correspondent, from 1913 throughout the Revolution.

The narrative shifts to Arthur's first-person account of getting out and back into Russia and escaping with his beloved. He becomes a pawn in the ongoing power struggle, and his every move is suspect, but he wants only to get himself and Evgenia safely out of the country. Ransome becomes romantically involved with Evgenia, Trotsky's personal secretary, and is caught up in the dangerous game of political intrigue and information exchange. In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and telephones, of murder and assassination.' Here the narrative shifts and uses flashbacks and the third person to report the events of the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed back to the British press. 'The time for princes and tsars and grand duchesses and especially holy madmen was gone. It opens in the style of a fairy tale, brilliantly setting the scene in Saint Petersburg in 1913, when the bright, impetuous young writer leaves his wife and daughter in England, teaches himself Russian, and sets about collecting the stories that appear in his first book, Old Peter's Russian Tales, published in 1916. Gr 9 Up-A historical novel based on the life of British author and journalist Arthur Ransome that is told in three distinct styles, each of which reflects an aspect of Ransome's career.

Blood Red, Snow White by Marcus Sedgwick