Book Review: Go Spy the Land

[osprey_archer]

I picked up George Alexander Hill’s Go Spy the Land: Being the Adventures of IK8 of the British Secret Service because the advertisement promised juicy details about Arthur Ransome’s time as an English spy in Russia right after the fall of the tsar and through the rise of the Bolsheviks. This is clearly a case of false advertising, as there are only a couple of pages concerning Ransome.

We do get this charming story: Hill’s hotel room had a bathtub, and Ransome’s did not, so Ransome would use Hill’s bathtub. As he bathed, they would argue about politics from room to room. (Apparently Ransome was politically very radical at the time, which I wouldn’t have guessed from Swallows and Amazons. Possibly longer acquaintance with Bolshevik excesses put him off radicalism for life.) When disagreement grew particularly vociferous, Ransome would rise up for the bath, whacking himself dry in a frenzy of disputation.

Lack of Ransome aside, this is a jolly good spy memoir. Hill seems to have spent the whole war going from front to front getting in and out of scrapes, like the time he and a compatriot arrived in Sebastopol to discover that the townsfolk wanted to kill Hill and co. on the grounds that they were undoubtedly there to lay groundwork for a British sea invasion. (Fortunately Hill’s colleague talked down the mob.)

Or the time he ran someone through with his sword stick, and afterward considered the blade with interest (he had never run anyone through before) and discovered it was only lightly filmed with blood.

Or the time that Hill’s train was stopped by a band of marauders, led by a woman in her twenty named Marucia, who suggested that Hill should become her lover and add his shiny new train engine to the strength of her brigands. Hill talked his way out of it by proclaiming his undying love for another woman, whom he could not, alas! betray, enchanting though Marucia was… His comment is something to the effect of “She was very pretty, but I’d heard too much about her viciousness to feel it was very healthy to have an affair with her.”

Later on Hill actually has to go undercover in a Russian, hiding out in a house with two English girls ALSO undercover as Russians (plus one actual Russian), where they narrowly escape death when they share some flour with their street monitor and in return he tells the Cheka searchers (who are just searching the whole street for funzies!) that no one lives there but some quiet over-worked seamstresses, no need to search that house... on the very night they have an unregistered guest (one of their couriers!) staying with them.

All in all, a very engaging account of derring-do.

Comments

[regshoe]

This sounds very exciting! I don't think I've heard very much at all about Arthur Ransome's spying career, but the bathtub story is a good one, heh.

[osprey_archer]

Arthur Ransome apparently did NOT like to talk about his spying days later in life, even though that's how he met his second wife and lifelong love, who was Trotsky's secretary at the time. (She must have been one of the few people connected to Trotsky that Stalin didn't have assassinated in the end - she outlived Ransome, IIRC.)

[sovay]

even though that's how he met his second wife and lifelong love, who was Trotsky's secretary at the time.

*blink*

I knew nothing about Ransome's private life; that's fascinating.

[osprey_archer]

Apparently he had a pretty lively private life! He and his first wife broke up while Ransome was in the midst of being sued by Alfred Douglas over a biography Ransome wrote of Oscar Wilde (Alfred Douglas apparently became pretty awful later in life), and the combined stress was so great that in 1913 Ransome ran away to Moscow to write a book of Russian fairy tales.

[skygiants]

Well now I really want to read a Ransome biography, despite never having read any Ransome ...

[osprey_archer]

I seem to be heading in a Ransome biography direction, so if I do end up reading one i will report back!

I feel the urge to say "You should read Swallows and Amazons!" but tbh I have no idea if you'd like it. There are many ACTUAL boats in these books, but nobody is the slightest bit shippy; tbh it's hard to imagine them growing up and getting involved in any kind of love affair, except perhaps for Captain Nancy, who will probably break hearts left and right (in fact I strongly suspect she has already started at boarding school) but never get involved herself, having already plighted her troth to that cruel mistress, the Sea.

[sovay]

(Alfred Douglas apparently became pretty awful later in life)

I mean, by the time of Plain English I would certainly have fired him into the sun without a qualm, but I have never had the impression he was all that much of a prize to begin with, beyond his face.

and the combined stress was so great that in 1913 Ransome ran away to Moscow to write a book of Russian fairy tales.

I've read it! I just had no idea of the impetus. I'm glad he came out of the experience with (a) books (b) a marriage that worked.

[regshoe]

...wow, that is certainly some context!

[philomytha]

That sounds amazing - another for my TBR pile. I’m in the middle of Ashenden, Somerset Maugham’s fictionalised account of his own WW1 spy adventures, which is also good fun.

[osprey_archer]

Everyone who was anyone seems to have been a spy in World War I! (And everyone slightly later seems to have been a spy in World War II.)

[genarti]

Later on Hill actually has to go undercover in a Russian, hiding out in a house with two English girls ALSO undercover as Russians (plus one actual Russian)

I assume that all three Brits knew about each other's status as actually British? However, there was a shining moment where I thought that each of them thought that they were the only person undercover in a house of actual Russians, and the mental image was amazing.

Anyway, this sounds great!

[sovay]

However, there was a shining moment where I thought that each of them thought that they were the only person undercover in a house of actual Russians, and the mental image was amazing.

Same.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, Hill set up the house specifically as a "British spies pretending to be Russians" house, so they did all know, although the image of three English spies living together with each under the impression that the others ARE native Russians is hilarious. Kind of like Monstrous Regiment, where everyone turns out to be keeping the very same secret?

[asakiyume]

However, there was a shining moment where I thought that each of them thought that they were the only person undercover in a house of actual Russians... --At which point the ratio of spies to Russians reminds me of the anthropologist joke about how the typical [fill in blank w/a people; I heard it with Navajos] family consists of parents, three children, and an anthropologist.

[anna_wing]

So many well-known people of that era turn to have been even more interesting than one would have thought.

One of the reasons I like the Economist's obituaries so much is that most of them are of people who did amazing things in their lives.

[osprey_archer]

Possibly at this point it shouldn't surprise me, because I've come across so many authors/actors/whatever who were also spies or whatever, but it gets me every time. It's like I think authors just live in closets and write books or something.

[littlerhymes]

the time that Hill’s train was stopped by a band of marauders, led by a woman in her twenty named Marucia, who suggested that Hill should become her lover and add his shiny new train engine to the strength of her brigands.

This is an entire novel and it's just one anecdote in his life. Sick!

[osprey_archer]

RIGHT THOUGH? Reading this book makes me wonder what I've been doing with my life.

[asakiyume]

Marucia sounds like Sovay--not our DW Sovay, but the highwaywoman of ballad fame. Definitely better not to tangle with such a one.

[osprey_archer]

Hill made a wise decision!