While delving into the Okhrana’s presence in London I came across a few snippets about Lenin, and his time in London.

Lenin did not really like London. Too grey, too polluted and and the continual damp of an English winter gave him a series of colds.

But there was one thing he liked about London – fish and chips – apparently he and his wife would regularly pick up fish and chips from a chip shop on Gray’s Inn Road, when out for a Sunday afternoon walk.

And perhaps that’s not really so strange.

Ivan Beshoff (at the time the usual English transliteration of ов was off, while today we would use ov), was a veteran of the Battleship Potemkin mutiny during the abortive 1905 revolution, knew Lenin in London, and later went on to found a fish and chip restaurant in Dublin.

And who knows, it could have been meeting Lenin in London that gave him the idea …