Erskine Childers

Robert Erskine Childers was born in 1870 and executed in 1922 by the nascent Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War. He was born in London, and educated at Haileybury School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in the Boer War, but by the outbreak of the First World War his attitude to Britain's Establishment and its politics had become somewhat equivocal. However, in the meantime he had published the work for which he is most famous - "The Riddle of the Sands", its date of publication being 1903. This book has become known as one of the most prominent of the pre-war books which foretold of the looming chaos.