One of the finest novels in his early period by this prolific and eminent giant author of the period,William Le Queux: this is a fast moving story blends political evil and Court conspiracy with a moving love affair in England between a member of the Imperial Romanoff family of Russia and an upper class English suitor facing the unbridgeable yawning social class gap between them. Bombs; assassinations; corrupt power and The revolutionists. Each and every figure is a real character leaping off the page in this drama centred on a fine gentlemanly bachelor of the period's genre Mr Trewinnard, who in many ways as a character is a precursor of his later spy heroes such as Sant. The drama centred on England and Russia, both the Imperial Court in Petersburg and graphically portrayed in a dramatic humanitarian race across Siberia in the height of winter. A really good read and a rollicking great yarn.
William Tufnell Le Queux (2 July 1864 – 13 October 1927) was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat (honorary consul for San Marino), a traveller (in Europe, the Balkans and North Africa), a flying buff who officiated at the first British air meeting at Doncaster in 1909, and a wireless pioneer who broadcast music from his own station long before radio was generally available; his claims regarding his own abilities and exploits, however, were usually exaggerated. His best-known works are the anti-French and anti-Russian invasion fantasy The Great War in England in 1897 (1894) and the anti-German invasion fantasy The Invasion of 1910 (1906), the latter becoming a bestseller.