The secret city

Abstract

Hugh Walpole, among the most popular and prolific of English authors in the first four decades of the twentieth century, is now largely forgotten and unread. There are, however, many aspects of his life and work that retain considerable interest and invite re-visiting. This article is essentially devoted to the period of some three years between September 1914 and November 1917 that brought Walpole his firsthand knowledge of a Russia torn by war and revolution and provided the material for two of his more important novels. The first part of the article looks at Walpole’s knowledge of Russian literature and at his activities in Russia as a journalist, then as a serving officer with the Russian Red Cross and, finally, as the Head of British Propaganda in Petrograd. The second section examines, firstly, The Dark Forest (1916), a novel arising from Walpole’s experiences at the Carpathian front, and then The Secret City (1919), his contribution to the ‘Petersburg myth’.