Status Updates From The Last Englishman: The Do...

I might read swallows and amazons again

It is wild to me that the person who wrote Swallows and Amazons interviewed Trotsky.

“As Lenin opened perhaps the most significant chapter in the history of twentieth-century politics, the Russian correspondent for the Daily News was at Fonthill, fishing for perch.”

He was blimmin right in the middle of the Russian revolution!

“Tyrkova told Lenin she had no wish to live in a Russia ruled by illiterate factory workers. Lenin, smiling coldly, had told her this was exactly why, when the Revolution came, she would be amongst the first to hang from a lamp post.”

“Over the following months, Ransome met Wilde’s two sons and his bibliographer, Walter Ledger, a member of the Royal Yachting Association whose invitation to a cruise was declined following news that he suffered episodes of homicidal mania.”

“Immediately after the church wedding, he visited Ivy’s parents in Bournemouth, where Mr Walker coolly informed him that Mrs Walker was like a blowfly, ‘depositing - is it five million or only five hundred thousand? - poison germs wherever she sets her foot’.”