 After his first novel , The Wooden Horse , in 1909 , Walpole wrote <unk> , producing at least one book every year . He was a spontaneous story @-@ teller , writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper , seldom revising . His first novel to achieve major success was his third , Mr Perrin and Mr Traill , a <unk> story of a fatal clash between two <unk> . During the First World War he served in the Red Cross on the Russian @-@ Austrian front , and worked in British propaganda in Petrograd and London . In the 1920s and 1930s Walpole was much in demand not only as a novelist but also as a lecturer on literature , making four exceptionally well @-@ paid tours of North America . 
