The Tragedy of Erskine Childers

In The Riddle of the Sands, a gripping spy story set amongst the shoals and mists of the North Sea coast in the years before the First World War, Erskine Childers fathered the modern genre of spy adventures, as well as writing a great yachting classic. Unlike John Buchan or John le Carré, however, Childers himself led a life involving spying, gun-running and conspiracy, and a constant search for adventure and danger, which led in the end to his execution by firing squad in Ireland in 1923.

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