Bolsheviks at the Ballet

That’s the trouble with anarchists: big ideas, shoddy staff work.

Harry Delamere doesn’t know much about opera, but he’s fairly sure people aren’t supposed to get murdered for real at the climax. In this excerpt from his memoirs - published as the Gentleman Adventurer series - he finds himself kidnapped, blown up, suspected of murder, forced to listen to Winston Churchill, kidnapped again - oh, and again - enjoying a terrifying encounter with modern technology and making a most ungentlemanly display of his legs while tackling the threat of world revolution.

A thrilling clash between the genteel arts and the new-fangled flying machines! Two of the most notorious incidents in the history of British radicalism! Shocks, scandals, anarchist outrages, sinister secret policemen, foreign beauties, pioneer pilots, domestic beauties, and a most distressing episode during the interval at the Alhambra.

‘Ye Gods’, said Winston Churchill; ‘Harry Delamere… It must be worse than we feared.’

© 2025 Elbow (Audiobook): 9781916366121

Release date

Audiobook: 26 June 2025