The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers

One of the first great spy novels, The Riddle of the Sands is set during the long suspicious years leading up to the First World War. In spite of good prospects in the Foreign Office, the sardonic civil servant Carruthers is finding it hard to endure the emptiness and boredom of his life in London. He reluctantly accepts an invitation from a college friend, Davies, the shyly intrepid yachtsman, and joins him on a sailing holiday in the Baltic. The story builds in excitement as Carruthers and Davies discover a German plot to invade England. Like much contemporary British spy fiction, The Riddle of the Sands reflects the Anglo-German rivalry of the early 20th century, and the intricacy of its conception and its lucid detail make it a classic of its genre. With an Afterword by Ned Halley.

Robert Erskine Childers was born in 1870 to an English father, Robert Caesar Childers, a famed professor of oriental languages at University College London, and his wife Anna, from the distinguished Barton family of Co Wicklow, Ireland. Both parents died from TB when he was a small boy, and Childers was brought up at his mother's family home. From Trinity College Cambridge, he went straight into the Civil Service as a House of Commons clerk, pursuing his first passion, for sailing, during the long parliamentary recesses. In 1899 he volunteered for service in the Boer War and wrote a popular account of his experiences, following this up in 1903 with The Riddle of the Sands. As a writer, he took up the cause of Irish Home Rule, and moved with his family to Ireland after distinguished service in the Royal Navy in the First World War. He was elected to the Dail, the Irish parliament, and was a delegate in the negotiations for the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1922. But the terms fell short of his hopes of full independence, and Childers joined the Republicans in the civil war that followed. He was arrested by the Free State government and court-martialled. He was executed by firing squad on 24 November 1922.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781905716456
ISBN 10	1905716451
Title	The Riddle of the Sands
Author	Erskine Childers
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Pan Macmillan
Year published	2008-09-01
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable