My niece came to visit me a month ago. Like me, she is a veritable bibliophile and hunts along the shelves of bookshops in Paris where she works and lives, for books that will catch her eye for one reason or another. She is on a voyage of reading discovery.
When she arrived she handed me two books, the first by Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time, which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog. The second, by Childers, turned out to be a real discovery. I emailed her as follows:
"I'm really into the Riddle of the Sands, love its gung-ho plot and somehow all that sailing technique does not get in the way. I feel Childers is showing off, I assume he was a keen yachtsman. Actually I am listening to it partially on Audible, read by Anton Lesser a vintage actor who is perfect in conveying a school boy earnestness for the adventure and he does an ace German accent.!"
Amazon says: The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service is a 1903 novel by Erskine Childers. The book, which enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I, is an early example of the espionage novel and was extremely influential in the genre of spy fiction. It has been made into feature-length films for both cinema and television. While on a sailing trip in the Baltic Sea, two young adventurers-turned-spies uncover a secret German plot to invade England. Written by Childers—who served in the Royal Navy during World War I—as a wake-up call to the British government to attend to its North Sea defenses, The Riddle of the Sands accomplished that task and has been considered a classic of espionage literature ever since.
Wiki has a full entry on this book and I really recommend a reading of the background information given. If you might be minded to read the book don't read The Plot section though!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Riddle_of_the_Sands
No comments:
Post a Comment