Forgotten Classics: The Riddle Of The Sands by Erskine Childers

My friend Julie Davis, of the Forgotten Classics podcast, has completed her recording a new/old novel. It’s new to me and its more than 100 years old. I had heard the title, The Riddle Of The Sands, around for a while but somehow over the years I had managed to conflate it with a movie called Woman In The Dunes. When I heard BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time discussion of The Riddle Of The Sands that cleared up all my confusion. You can hear that IOT discussion in |REALAUDIO| or via downloading the In Our Time 2008 |TORRENT| (it has the more portable MP3 version). Julie’s reading, complete in 18 parts, is in her podcast feed and her website.

The Riddle Of The Sands: A Record Of Secret Service
By Erskine Childers; Read by Julie D.
18 MP3 Files – Approx. 17 Hours 5 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Forgotten Classics
Podcast: April 2010 – September 2010
Containing many realistic details based on Childers’ 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. It was one of the early invasion novels which predicted war with Germany and called for British preparedness. The plot involves the uncovering of secret German preparations for an invasion of the United Kingdom. It is often called the first modern spy novel, although others are as well, it was certainly very influential in the genre and for its time. The book enjoyed immense popularity in the years before World War I and was extremely influential. Winston Churchill later credited it as a major reason that the Admiralty decided to establish naval bases at Invergordon, the Firth of Forth and Scapa Flow.