 Walpole returned to Petrograd in February 1916 . He moved into <unk> 's flat , and his Anglo @-@ Russian Propaganda Bureau began work . The following month he suffered a personal blow : he recorded in his diary for 13 March 1916 , " Thirty two to @-@ day ! Should have been a happy day but was completely <unk> for me by reading in the papers of Henry James ' death . This was a terrible shock to me . " Walpole remained at the bureau for the rest of 1916 and most of 1917 , witnessing the February Revolution . He wrote an official report on events for the Foreign Office , and also absorbed ideas for his fiction . In addition to the first of his popular " Jeremy " novels , written in his spare time from the bureau , he began work on the second of his Russian @-@ themed books , The Secret City . Sadleir writes that this novel and The Dark Forest " take a high place among his works , on account of their intuitive understanding of an alien mentality and the <unk> of their narrative power . " The book won the inaugural James <unk> Black Memorial Prize for fiction . 
