In The Storm

DECEMBER 2016. A young English woman crosses a North Sea patrolled by German submarines on the first stage of her lengthy journey to the Southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don where she is engaged as a tutor to the teenage daughter of a prosperous industrialist. Within three months the Russian Revolution explodes, and she is caught up in chaotic and bloody months of violence.

Rhoda Power's remarkable record describes with an extraordinary cool eye - and often humorous ear - her growing sense of insecurity and powerlessness as the conventions and divisions of the social order are swept aside in a tumultuous outpouring of repressed resentment, prejudice, vengeful lawlessness, terror and murder. The shell fire and machine-gun bullets of the Battle of Rostov become the soundtrack of her daily life. Death is all around. And the Germans are advancing.

Originally published in 1919 as Under Cossack and Bolshevik Rhoda Power's account of an ordered existence degenerating into battles raging in the streets around her and of her perilous escape is a neglected classic of outstanding "on the ground " reporting of events at a time when morality and justice no longer exist. Her words bring home the courage of a remarkable woman; although written over 100 years ago, they have a remarkable contemporary resonance and relevance in today's turbulent world of conflict.

Rhoda Power (born 1890) was a children's author and broadcaster. As a young tutor in South Russia she was caught up in the terror of the 1917-18 Revolution, publishing her personal account in 1919. In 1926 with her sisterEileen, later professor at LSE, she wrote her first (of over 40) children's history books. She then pioneered her own transformational format of history radio programmes for schools, featuring dialogue sound-effects and music, becoming one of the most celebrated and widely listened-to broadcasters on the BBC. She died in 1957 but her scripts were still being used in 1970. Her book Redcap Runs Away (1952) is a children's classic.