John Cournos (1881—1966) was a writer of Russian-Jewish background, born in the Ukraine from where his family emigrated when he was aged 10. He lived in Britain in the 1910s and 1920s, where his literary career started, and later emigrated to the USA where he spent the rest of his life.
He was one of the Imagist poets, but is better known for his other writing, of novels, short stories, essays and criticism, and as a translator of Russian literature. He used the pseudonym John Courtney. He also wrote for The Philadelphia Record under the pseudonym "Gorky."
Later in life he married Helen Kestner (1893—1960), who was also an author, under the pseudonym Sybil Norton. However, he is probably best known for his unhappy affair with Dorothy L. Sayers which she had fictionalized in the detective book Strong Poison, published in 1930 and he himself did in The Devil Is an English Gentleman (1932).
In the aftermath of the October Revolution Cournos was involved with a London-based anti-Communist organization named The Russian Liberation Committee. On its behalf he wrote in 1919 a propaganda pamphlet named London under the Bolsheviks: A Londoner's Dream on Returning from Petrograd.
In Cournos' lurid but humorous future history, a British revolutionary regime introduces a new currency named "The MacDonald" for Ramsey MacDonald; MacDonald is, however, soon shoved aside by the Bolshevik leaders MacLenin and Trotsman (sic). A counter-revolutionary drive by General Haig is defeated at at St Albans. Lloyd George is imprisoned in the Tower of London, and H.G. Wells is also imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, despite his left-leaning book Love and Mr Lewisham. The London described is plagued by poverty, with black market cigarettes and broken lifts, and the narrator wanders round the Strand, exclaiming at the filth of the streets, the idlers and the jealous envy displayed towards his new boots.