He played chess with Lenin and fell in love with Trotsky’s secretary Evgenia Shelepina. In England he was regarded with profound suspicion as a possible Soviet agent.

In 1919 when Moscow was surrounded by counter-revolutionaries, he and Evgenia escaped. They travelled through Estonia with a horse and cart knowing they would be shot if recognised.

In the Homing Stone master storyteller Hugh Lupton (who is also Ransome’s great-nephew) tells the epic tale of that perilous and extraordinary journey.