The Shadow of the Winter Palace by Edward Crankshaw

Edward Crankshaw (1909–1984) was a British writer, translator, and commentator on Soviet events. He was born in London and educated at Bishop's Stortford College in Hertfordshire, a nonconformist public school. For a few months, he worked as a journalist at The New York Times. He lived in Vienna, Austria, in the 1930s, teaching English and learning German (his command of the German language enabled him to join the British Intelligence Agency during World War II). Upon his return, he resumed writing for The New York Times and began writing reviews for The Spectator, The Bookman, and other publications, mostly for musicals. Crankshaw published roughly 40 volumes on Austrian and Russian issues before resuming his research after the war. Gestapo (1956), Crankshaw's book about Nazi terror, was extensively read, and in 1963, he began to write ambitious literary pieces, typically based on historical or epic episodes in Russian political history.