THE LAST ENGLISHMAN

Roland Chambers (Faber, £20)

I have to confess that I did not really enjoy Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons as a child. But I did find delight in his yarns when I read them as bedtime stories to my own children. The nostalgic world that Ransome created in the first book and its samey sequels, about imaginative childhoods that never really existed, was almost as much of a fantasy as Harry Potter.

This excellent biography, a first by Roland Chambers, who is also a children’s author, does detail Ransome’s development as a writer, from struggling hack journalist to million-selling author, but it is the darker side of his life that makes the book such a fascinating read.

Ransome was the Russian correspondent for the Manchester Guardian between 1917 and 1924, reporting on that period of huge social and political upheaval. He had access to some of the revolutionary leaders, most notably Karl Radek, Bolshevik chief of propaganda, and he enjoyed a love affair with Trotsky’s private secretary, Evgenia Shelepina, who later became Ransome’s second wife.

Presumably because he was seen as a conduit of positive propaganda for the Bolshevik regime, Ransome was accused by Whitehall of spying and narrowly avoided prosecution for treason. These intriguing aspects are explored in the central part of the book.

Post-Russia, Ransome moved to an uncomfortable but picturesque cottage in the Lake District with Evgenia and, erasing all unpleasantness, wrote his idyllic boat-based tales of John, Susan, midshipman Titty and the ship’s boy Roger, the much-loved crew of the Swallow, characters based on the real-life children of a family friend. As the years passed he steadily became less infamous and more famous, and his stories became massive best-sellers.

Chambers tells of Ransome’s hopeless first marriage and his dreadful relationship with his only child, Tabitha, born of that marriage. She came into possession of Ransome’s large library of books, through the divorce settlement, and refused many times over the years to return them to him, even when as a successful author he offered to buy them back for a substantial sum of money.

Booklovers will know just how much this must have rankled with him.