John Cournos

John Cournos (1881–1966), a writer of Russian-Jewish background, was born in the Ukraine, whence his family emigrated when he was aged 10. During the 1910s and 1920s, he lived in Britain, where his literary career started. He later emigrated to the USA, where he spent the rest of his life.

He was one of the Imagist poets, but is better known for his novels, short stories, essays and criticism, and as a translator of Russian literature. He used the pseudonym John Courtney. He also wrote for The Philadelphia Record under the pseudonym "Gorky."

Later in life he married Helen Kestner (1893–1960), who was also an author, under the pseudonym Sybil Norton. However, he is probably best known for his unhappy affair with Dorothy L. Sayers, fictionalized by Sayers in the detective book Strong Poison (1930) and by Cournos himself in The Devil Is an English Gentleman (1932).

Anti-Communist Propaganda
In the aftermath of the October Revolution Cournos was involved with a London-based anti-Communist organization named The Russian Liberation Committee. On its behalf he wrote in 1919 a propaganda pamphlet named London under the Bolsheviks: A Londoner's Dream on Returning from Petrograd.

In Cournos' lurid but humorous future history, a British revolutionary regime introduces a new currency named "The MacDonald" for Ramsey MacDonald; MacDonald is, however, soon shoved aside by the Bolshevik leaders MacLenin and Trotsman (sic). A counter-revolutionary drive by General Haig is defeated at St Albans. Lloyd George is imprisoned in the Tower of London. H.G. Wells, too, is imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, despite his left-leaning book Love and Mr Lewisham. London is portrayed as plagued by poverty, with black market cigarettes and broken lifts, and the narrator wanders round the Strand exclaiming at the filth of the streets, the idlers and the jealous envy displayed towards his new boots.