Long ago, on 13 April 1895 to be precise, Lily, a little English lady (of Irish descent) arrived at Bologna Centrale, the central railway station of Bologna in northern Italy. She travelled by boat from London across the Channel to Flushing in the Netherlands to embark on a long train journey across Europe. It took her a few days, but she did not mind because, despite her young age, she was an experienced traveller of the continent.

The reason for her travelling to Italy was love. She had fallen in love with a mysterious man in London. A man who was not who he appeared to be and who was involved in Russian and Polish revolutionary circles, who at the time had found shelter with early socialists in London. That man was Georgy Rosenblum, later known as Sidney Reilly. Spy for the Crown, the Russian Tsar and an absolutely charming man, a womaniser. And Lily, though engaged and living with Wilfryd, a Russian revolutionary, had fallen for Sidney's charms.

In that summer of '95, she was led by a priest, Father Lorenzo, whom she met by chance, to the archives of the University of Bologna to study the Risorgimento, the Austro-Italian war of independence a few decades earlier. And it was there that she wrote the story of The Gadfly, her new and revolutionary novel that would be published in New York in 1897 and later in London, St Petersburg, China, Vietnam and eventually a few other European countries.

It was a summer of an exciting and adulterous love affair that formed the basis for one of the most compelling revolutionary novels, a book that has inspired young Russians to this day and has sold more than 10 million copies since its first printing. Ethel Lilian Boole would become the most successful young adult writer of the first half of the 20th century and the most unknown successful writer of her time. Even she would not find out how successful she was in the Soviet Union until her final years, decades later. Largely unknown and unread in the West, but immensely popular in the East. The Gadfly would become an icon in Soviet literature. But did she make up the story in her novel or was it the harrowing story of the priest Alfonso that she retold?

The Voynich Affair is a compelling story about the creation of one of literature's masterpieces, about a love affair between a young English woman and the most famous spy in the late 19th century, about an old priest's regrets and the dangers of falling for any form of extremism.

Click on the pictures on the right to learn more about the author and her previous work.