In a letter to Charles Hardinge, Edward’s protégé in the Foreign Office, Sir Arthur Nicolson, the British ambassador in St Petersburg, warned that, sooner or later, a successful revolution would ‘sweep away dynasty, Government, and much else’.12 Until then, Russian dissidents hunkered down in the safe haven of London. Free speech, freedom of the press and minimal police interference attracted Leon Trotsky, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin to the British capital. Disapproval of the conditions under which so many Russians suffered even seeped into polite Edwardian nurseries.
