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    The Riddle of the Sands
    The Riddle of the Sands
    The Riddle of the Sands
    Ebook387 pages6 hours

    The Riddle of the Sands

    By Erskine Childers

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    Written in 1903 by the active and ultimately executed Irish republican Erskine Childers, "The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service" unfolds the story of a minor official in the Foreign Office, Carruthers, and his complete boredom with his occupation. Although his prospects are good, he feels an emptiness in his life, and this in large part encourages Carruthers to go sailing with his friend Davies. This acquaintance suspects German naval activity in the Baltic, and the two overcome numerous obstacles, both by suspicious German patrol boats and tricky inshore sailing, to discover information that complicates the feelings of both young men. The lone masterpiece of a man who died for a cause, this earliest of spy thrillers details not only the love of Davies, but the revival of Carruthers in a time of intrigue, adventure, suspicion, and burgeoning war.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2010
    ISBN9781596742970
    Author

    Erskine Childers

    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.

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      The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers

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