In the only novel Conrad set in London, The Secret Agent communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894 masterminded by Verlac, a Russian spy working for the police, and ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho. His masters instruct him to discredit the anarchists in a humiliating fashion, and when his evil plan goes horribly awry, Verlac must deal with the repercussions of his actions. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born into a Polish family who lived in the Ukraine. At the age of sixteen he went to sea, and later joined the British Merchant Navy, becoming a Master Mariner and a British citizen in 1886. After twenty years at sea, he came to live in England, where he wrote many famous novels, including Lord Jim, Nostromo, Heart of Darkness, and The Secret Agent.