The riddle of the sands

The riddle of the sands book

Gesine's reading was comfortable and easy to follow. It se There are many red herrings - for example, for much of the book, their suspicions centre on Memmert.

I agree that the maps are important, so I supply a good link. As set out in detail in the book's Epilogue, the German plan constitutes a vast, audacious military deception.

Childers himself was an avid small-craft sailor, with a passion for exploring the North Sea and the German coast. Additional finance was provided by the National Film Finance Corporation.

Several scenes were also shot in the German village of Greetsiel. I owe a big debt to people like Alan Parker and Ridley Scottwho proved to the film establishment that a young film director can get it all together and deliver. This particular edition is wonderful, given the Introduction by Milt Bearden, and the quality of the text itself, so I highly recommend it.

But this is arguable. He manages to follow von Bruning and his men without being noticed, and trails them to a port where they board a tugboat towing a barge. The hidden Carruthers is present at the successful testing voyage where the lighter proves fully sea-worthy, and then manages to sabotage the tug and escape.

The Duke of Leominster - a cynical schemer but also a British patriot - takes on his own the act of sending the Gloria for a desperate last moment effort. For much of its first third, the book seems primarily an account of in-shore sailing on the Baltic, with occasional storms for excitement.

Carruthers and Davies are wonderful characters, the former a fop from the Foreign Office, the latter an eccentric sailing fanatic. In the confusion Carruthers sees the face of the high-ranking participant and recognizing him as "one who, in Germany, has a better right to insist than anyone else" - the implication clearly being that it was Kaiser Wilhelm II in person.

The sequence of Carruthers and Davies navigating their way between sandbanks in the Frisian Islands was shot on Frensham Ponds in Surrey with the aid of nine large fog machines; this was done because the tidal flows and sands of the Frisian Islands would have made actually filming there very difficult.

Childers's life was quite a bit more interesting than this book: he helped smuggle arms to the Irish during their struggle against the British and he was executed by a firing squad.

I found the two characters, Davies, and the narrator, Carruthers, to be believable and sympathetic.

In one breath he is a total opportunist who would do anything for his grand plan. Found this to be a slow read indeed, had a "boys own adventure" feel to it. German hopes for a quick and decisive victory would hinge upon the loss of the industrial towns being so demoralizing to the British and dislocating to their economy that Britain would agree to sign a peace on terms favourable to Germany.

They make clandestine investigations so they can alert the Admiralty and Foreign Office.

It is also credited as an inspiration to everyone from John Buchan to Ken Follett. The plot involves the uncovering of secret German preparations for an invasion of the United Kingdom.

Most of all, his books were, and are, moral dramas, as well as political ones. Apologies if this happened, because human users outside of Germany who are making use of the eBooks or other site features should almost never be blocked.

German troops - infantry with the lightest type of field guns - would board big sea-going lighterstowed by powerful but shallow-draught tugs, which would proceed to the sea through the Frisian canal network that was unobtrusively widened and extended for years, in preparation for this day.

But he convinces von Bruning that he believes the cover story about treasure and merely wants to see the imaginary "wreck".May 29,  · The Riddle of the Sands was published in Mayand it has probably sold more than two million copies in its lifetime.

Its author Erskine Childers was infuriated when it was described as fiction, because for him the issue of a probable German invasion by sea was real and the danger obvious. Many reviewers at. LibriVox recording of The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers.

Containing many realistic details based on Childers's own sailing trips along the German North Sea coast, the book is the retelling of a yachting expedition in the early 20th century combined with an adventurous spy story.

Oct 01,  · Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg. Eleven years after this book came out, Germany used its navy to try to starve England out via U-Boots sinking ships carrying imports, rather than invasion. But in the meanwhile this book, Riddle of the Sands, resulted in some large changes in the British navy basing, because in fact, the plan was plausible.

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. Sep 02,  · Classic review: The Riddle of the Sands The roots of that deeper kind of spy thriller go back to Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands He is the author of the memoir An Open Book.