Boring old paper

I should talk about the old-style book which I am currently reading. All this new-fangled Palm based stuff has blinded me to the joys of a good fat paper-based tome. Enough of the purple stuff. It is The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome which I mentioned a few weeks ago because of the BBC History magazine article about him working for British Intelligence during the Russian Revolution - Funnily enough he doesn't mention that in the book. I am having trouble reconciling this with the Swallows and Amazons series but I suppose this shows the standard thing that the best spies are the people who you would not even begin to suspect. There is a program called 'Liar' on the BBC where a number of people have to convince the Studio Audience that they are telling the truth about themselves. Each week all the people say they have a particular slightly off-the-wall occupation or claim to fame and the audience have to guess which one is telling the truth. If the audience guess right then they get £10,000 shared amongst them; if they guess wrong the successful duper gets all the money for themselves. The audience gradually vote people off as being liars until they have to chose the one person telling the truth. One week, all the panel members said they were spies of some sort. The first person to be voted off as being a liar was of course the real spy - a British spy as well. I didn't guess that it was him but I was certain that Israeli Intelligence would NEVER let one of their ex members go on TV and tell everyone. I was convinced it was the CIA guy who turned out to be British - his accent was perfect and his demeanour very convincing. I suppose because there are many more people in the world who are NOT spies it is impossible to use the reverse logic that anyone who doesn't look or behave like a spy is one. Unless of course everyone in the world is a spy and this is the Truman Show - sorry! Tuesday Morning paranoia. (A Good name for a group there). The show is hosted by Paul Kaye by the way who, as you know was Dennis Pennis.

Anyway, back to AR. (See here for an interesting link). As he died in 1967, there are still a few years before the copyright runs out on the S&A books though "Russia in 1919" is available. I am currently reading the bits about ARs trips to the Russian Front during WWI which so far seem only to hint at the horrors as if he though he ought to write this to cover up that he wasn't only a reporter. Is it strange that he was allowed to marry Trotsky's secretary Evgenia? His whole life seems to be a melding of the gentle pace of the Swallows and Amazons books with the hint of the cool and dangerous side of his Intelligence work. All this is beginning to turn into rambling so I think I had better stop. See you at Lunchtime.