Wilhelm II was Kaiser of Germany in 1903 when The Riddle of the Sands was published. Despite his misgivings, he felt a strange lightening of his spirits and there being no other alternatives, he telegrammed Davies to say he would join him. The thought of spending October freezing in the Baltic with an eccentric nobody like Davies did not appeal to him. It was from Arthur Davies, an Oxford acquaintance from his student days, whom he had only seen on a few occasions over the past three years, asking him if he’d care to join him in a little yachting and duck shooting in the Baltic.Ĭarruthers’ memory of Davies was that of a dull type of chap who, unlike himself, took no care with his appearance, and had no money to spend on luxuries like a decent yacht. It was while he was in this depressing state that he received a letter bearing a German post-mark and marked ‘Urgent’. With his acquaintances and friends off on holidays, he had come to the humiliating realisation that ‘the world I found so indispensable could after all dispense with me.’ He spent time sailing in the North Sea and the Channel and also explored the shoals of the Dutch, Danish and German coasts.Ĭharles Carruthers, having had his carefully laid holiday plans upended by his superiors in the Foreign Office, had settled into a dismal routine in London. During the First World War he did reconnaissance work in the Royal Naval Air service and served as an Intelligence Officer. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers (subtitled, A Record of Secret Service) was published in 1903 and is considered to be the first modern spy thriller.Ĭhilders had an interesting background he was raised in Ireland, educated at Cambridge, and was a clerk in the House of Commons for fifteen years.

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