Arthur Michell Ransome CBE (1884 – 1967) – British author and a foreign correspondent coveromg WW1 on the Eastern Front for “The Daily News”.

Arthur Ransome wearing his
Press Corps Uniform in WW1 

Arthur was born on 18th January 1884 in Leeds, UK.  He was the son of Cyril Ransome (1851–1897) who was a Professor of History at Yorkshire College (now the University of Leeds). and his wife Edith Ransome (née Baker Boulton) (1862–1944).   

Arthur was the eldest of four children - he had two sisters, Cecily and Joyce, and a brother Geoffrey who was killed in the First World War in 1918.   Joyce married into the Lupton family, well-connected industrialists and politicians; she named one of her sons Arthur Ralph Ransome Lupton (1924–2009), Her grandson is storyteller Hugh Lupton.

The Ransome family regularly holidayed at Nibthwaite in the Lake District, and Arthur was carried up to the top of Coniston Old Man as an infant. 

Educated first in Windermere and then at Rugby School (where he lived in the same study room that had been used by Lewis Carroll) where he did not entirely enjoy the experience, because of his poor eyesight, lack of athletic skill, and limited academic achievement, Arthur went on to study chemistry at Yorkshire College, where his late father had worked. His father's premature death in 1897 had a lasting effect on him. 

After a year at Yorkshire College, Arthur abandoned his studies and went to London to become a writer. He took low-paying jobs as an office assistant in a publishing company and as editor of a failing magazine – “Temple Bar Magazine”, while establishing himself as a member of the literary scene.

His mother did not want him to abandon his studies for writing, but was later supportive of his books. She urged him to publish “The Picts and the Martyrs” in 1943, although his second wife Evgenia hated it and was often discouraging about his books while he was writing them.

Arthur married Ivy Constance Walker in 1909 and they had one daughter  - Tabitha. It was not a happy marriage as Arthur found his wife's demands to spend less time on writing and more with her and their daughter a great strain; his biographer Hugh Brogan writes that "it was impossible to be a good husband to Ivy". The couple weredivorced in 1924.

In 1913 Ransome left his first wife and daughter and went to Russia to study its folklore..

After the start of the First World War in 1914, Arthur became a foreign correspondent and covered the war on the Eastern Front for “The Daily News”. He also covered the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and came to sympathise with the Bolshevik cause, becoming personally close to a number of its leaders, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek. He met the woman who would later become his second wife - Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina - who worked as Trotsky's personal secretary.

He also wrote about the literary life of London and about Russia before, during and after the Revolutions of 1917. His connection with the leaders of the Revolution led to him providing information to the Secret Intelligence Service, while he was also suspected by MI5 of being a Soviet spy.

In 1915, Arthur published “The Elixir of Life” (published by Methuen, London), which was to be his only full-length novel apart from the “Swallows and Amazons” series. He published “Old Peter's Russian Tales” - a collection of 21 folktales from Russia - the following year

After a long and successful life, Arthur died on 3rd  June 1967.

Margaret Agnes Rope (1882 – 1953) – British stained glass artist

 

I discovered Margaret Rope while watching an episode of Michael Portillo’s documentary “Great British Railway Journeys” when he visited Shrewsbury.

Margaret was born on 20th June 1882 the second child of Henry John Rope, M.D (1847-1899) and Agnes Maud (née Burd: 1857- 1948). She was christened Margaret Agnes at St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury on 7th July. Margaret’s elder brother was Henry Edward George Rope who became a Roman Catholic Priest, writer, poet and editor. 

The Rope family were Anglican but, soon after her husband's early death in 1899, their mother converted to Roman Catholicism (along with 5 of her 6 children).  She brought her children up in some degree of poverty, exacerbated by her father's will, which denied money to any descendant "in religion".   Of the children, two became nuns (Margaret and Monica) and one a priest (Fr. Harry Rope). Two other siblings were Irene Vaughan, a botanist, and Squadron Leader Michael Rope, an aeronautical engineer, who died in the R101 airship disaster on 5th October 193. Only one, Denys, a doctor of medicine, continued as an Anglican, following his father.

Henry Edward George Rope (Father Harry Rope) (23 October 1880 – 1 March 1978) was a writer, poet, editor and priest widely known in the Roman Catholic Church in his long lifetime. He was the eldest brother of Margaret Agnes Rope, stained-glass artist, nephew of Ellen Mary Rope, sculptor, and George Thomas Rope, painter and naturalist as well as cousin of M. E. Aldrich Rope, another stained-glass artist. Due to his writings and his work as archivist at the Venerable English College, Rome, he was well known in his lifetime, particularly within Church circles but as a radical traditionalist he has been forgotten in modern times

Margaret was educated at home until in 1900 she went to the Birmingham Municipal School of Art.  Her studies included enamelling and lettering. From 1901, she studied stained glass under Henry Payne.  Margaret had an illustrious career at the school including a number of scholarships and won many awards in the National Competition for Schools of Art. In 1909, she left the school and worked from home (The Priory, Shrewsbury) especially on the large west window of Shrewsbury Cathedral, the first of seven she did there

Although there is no indication that Margaret served in any capacity during the First World War, several of her siblings were directly involved in the war effort - as an ambulance driver, a naval air service member and a nurse ministering to wounded soldiers.  Margaret was running a successful stained-glass studio in London at the time. 

Margaret and her sister were apparently arrested in Suffolk on suspicion of being German spies during the war, because they were riding motorbikes, which was unusual for women at the time. 

(Two women who also rode motor cycles were Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm – there are two excellent books about them - 

https://inspirationalwomenofww1.blogspot.com/2013/07/elsie-and-mairi-go-to-war.html

https://inspirationalwomenofww1.blogspot.com/search?q=Mairi+Chisholm

However, Margaret Rope did create a significant amount of war memorial work after the conflict, suggesting she felt deeply the loss of the young men who died.

Margaret died on 6th December 1953.