The Man from St. Petersburg

The Man from St. Petersburg is a thriller by Ken Follett, published in 1982 and set in the months before the First World War, against the background of the Anglo-German naval arms race.

British strategy depends on bringing Russia into an agreement, and the negotiations take place in London, where Prince Alexei, the nephew of Tsar Nicholas, arrives for high-level talks. Lord Stephen Walden, one of the men conducting them, is married to Lydia, a Russian aristocrat, and the visiting prince is her nephew, which makes the politics of the conference personal as well as diplomatic. Feliks, a Russian anarchist, goes to London intending to assassinate the prince so that the negotiations collapse, and when a first attempt with a gun fails he looks for another route, discovering that Lydia is a woman from his own past. Ranged against him are the police, the household, an English lord and Winston Churchill.

Follett writes historical thrillers in which private loyalties and public negotiations pull against each other, and this one keeps both the assassination and the conference in view.