The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service by Irish author Erskine Childers is often described as the first modern thriller and was one of the first popular spy novels.
Published in 1903 novel it spearheaded a genre and influenced the great espionage writers John Buchan, Ian Fleming, John le Carre and many others. The plot involves the uncovering of secret German preparations for an invasion of the United Kingdom and is sited by Winston Churchill as one of the major reasons the Admiralty decided to establish naval bases at Invergordon, the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow.
Robert Erskine Childers (1870 - 1922) was an Irish nationalist. Son of British Orientalist scholar Robert Caesar Childers; the cousin of Hugh Childers and Robert Barton; and the father of the fourth President of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers.
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