This should have been the perfect read, combining two of my favourite subjects - Russian history and Arthur Ransome. Sadly, it was anything but. The book wore its research uncommonly heavily, making even subjects like Ransome's involvement with Oscar Wilde seem mildly tedious as opposed to interesting.
The sections in Russia were of a little interest and a writer with more flair than Chambers would have made much of Ransome's ailments and discomfort. I have to admit to struggling through to the end in the way I would expect from an academic tome rather than a mass-market history book on the shelves of an airport branch of Smith's.
I learned from this that Arthur Ransome was not a great human being and that his life was one of no little incident. I appreciate that this book tries to take on that life from a different vantage point to that portrayed by his most famous literary works. Unfortunately, those works represent the Ransome legacy, not the Russian tales, so relegating them to a few pages at the end of the book was a folly.
Overall view - I appreciate the work and research that went into the creation of the work, but I can't rate it even a decent read.
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