Bibliofemme News
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02/03/2005
Swallows and Amazons author tracked by MI5
Arthur Ransome, best known as the author of beloved children's classic Swallows and Amazons, was suspected of being a spy by British intelligence.
Ransome, who died in 1967, was watched by MI5 during the twenties and thirties because of fears that he was working as a double agent for Soviet Russia.
He was in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, was friends with several Russian revolutionary leaders, also traveled regularly to Russia as a reporter for English newspapers and in 1924 married Evgenia Shelepin, Trotsky's secretary.
In the wake of the Revolution he was recruited by the British government and, while he was keeping London informed of what he learnt, there were suspicions that he may have been allied with the Soviets.
While MI5 interest in Ransome faded during the 1920s it was only in 1937 that they decided that he could be removed from the "black list".
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