opponent of Marxist ideology. Polish Jews also fled due to the intensifying anti-Semitic pogroms and better economic opportunities. Among the notable Polish Jews who came to Britain were Henry Lowenfeld theatrical impresario and brewer, Michael Marks (co-founder of Marks & Spencer), Morris Wartski (founder of Wartski antique dealers) and the family of Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco. Perhaps the most famous Polish person to settle in Britain at the end of the 19th century, having gained British citizenship in 1886, was the seafarer turned early modernist novelist, Józef Korzeniowski, better known by his pen name, Joseph Conrad. He was the highly influential author of such works as Almayer's Folly, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Duel, Under Western Eyes and Victory, many of which have been turned into films. At the end of the 19th-century London, along with Zurich and Vienna, had become one of the centres of Polish political activism, especially of the left. Józef Piłsudski stayed in Leytonstone after his escape from St-Petersburg. The political review, "Przedświt" ("Pre-Dawn") was published in Whitechapel for several years, notably under the editorship of Leon Wasilewski 1898–1903, later to become the first foreign minister of a newly independent Poland in 1918. Both before and after the First World War, a few Poles settled in Londonfollowing the Russian Revolution of 1905 and then in the war, those released from London's prisoner-of-war camps for Germans and Austrians in the Alexandra Palace and at Feltham. In 1910 a sixteen-year old youth from Warsaw settled in London for the sake of his art: he was to be a future ballet master, Stanislas Idzikowski. Polish people living in the Austrian and German partitions had been obliged to serve in their respective national forces and were unable to return. The resurgence of an independent Poland in 1918, briefly complicated by the Polish–Soviet War from 1918 to 1920, enabled the country to rapidly reorganise its polity, develop its economy, and resume its place in international forums. One of the Polish delegates at the Paris Peace Conference, was a London-based émigré, Count Leon Ostroróg. This two-decade period of advance was disrupted in September 1939 by a coordinated German and Soviet invasion that marked the beginning of World War II. Second World War It was the Polish contribution to the Allied war effort in the United Kingdom that led to the