As the murders proliferated, Ransome responded by comparing Lenin to Oliver Cromwell, and announced that he was walking "these abominable, unswept, mountainously dirt-clogged, snow-clogged streets in exultation". He even managed to deny the existence of the Red Terror of 1918 — the mass executions in the wake of an assassination attempt upon Lenin.
From 1917, Ransome had been in love with a girl, as well as a regime. After a privileged interview with Trotsky, he was searching for a censor to stamp his telegram, when he found a "tall, jolly girl" to help him — Evgenia Shelepina, Trotsky's private secretary. Together, they found the censor, asleep, with a boiled-out pot of potatoes blackening on the stove — a view behind the scenes, he boasted, "such as no other foreigner enjoyed". The British authorities were naturally alarmed. Chambers has assembled an impressively thorough and amusing dossier of the memos that flew between agents, diplomats and Secret Service officials. Most passed scathing judgment: "a dangerous fool"; a "coward"; "dishonest"; "a man chiefly interested in himself...without convictions or morality". Yet the conclusion was that, treated with due caution (his facts were often correct, even if his judgment was unsound), this "out-and-out-Bolshevik" could be of use; and he was signed up with the code-number S76.
But there is evidence that he may have been an equally useful idiot for the Russians. He had dubious meetings with senior officials in the Cheka, and did not warn the British Mission of an impending raid, though prudently leaving Moscow himself; he smuggled roubles into Sweden using a Russian passport; and when he arranged to bring Evgenia out of Russia, she was carrying 35 diamonds and three strings of pearls, authorised by the Ministry of the Interior for Soviet agents abroad.
As a father, Ransome displayed his least likeable traits. It is easier to forgive his desertion of his first wife (and divorce rarely brings out the best in anyone) than it is to explain his treatment of their daughter. His role in her existence was in his view no excuse for alimony. There is an appalling letter written to Tabitha to celebrate her 21st birthday, telling her that she was "no better than...a bug or a flea that sucks blood and gives nothing", and launching into a vilely self-pitying account of his marriage to her mother.
Ransome and Evgenia had no children: the four heroes of Swallows and Amazons were based on the half-Armenian children of friends — Taqui, Susan, Titty and Roger Altounyan. Ransome soon disliked them too: he managed to convince himself that the "Armenian brats" were somehow stealing credit for his stories.
The Last Englishman is an oddly unengaging read. This perhaps is not the biographer's fault. Although there are passages of awkward writing, the flatness is chiefly due to the fact that Chambers can find little in Ransome's character to inspire sympathy. Ransome may have "struggled to believe in himself", but, as Chambers remarks, there is little "romantic conviction" in his self-
invention. Instead, Chambers finds only "the absence of conviction; a querulous, judgmental void, planted in childhood".
