From the 1880s until the Bolshevik revolution, Tyneside hosted a number of Russians who lived strange and sometimes dangerous lives. They were few, but fascinating.

The first was an anarchist and aristocrat wanted by the Russian police since his escape from a fortress prison in St Petersburg, There was a writer who, unknowingly, was a major influence on British post war literature; a Bolshevik whom Lenin described as the “favourite of the whole party”, and several who used false names abroad to hide their secrets.

Each was to be found at different times in Newcastle, and one of them had a searing memory of something terrible that happened in Whitley Bay.