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Fiction

The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
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The Riddle of the Sands

by Erskine Childers

Recommendations from our site

“It’s a ripping yarn, it’s just so exciting. I first read it when I was about ten, and I’ve re-read it periodically since and it combines two of the things that I love most. It’s a great thriller, but it’s also brilliant about sailing. And it was written tremendously early – it was published in 1903. He really invented a new way of writing about international affairs. It was incredibly influential. It had a profound political effect because it pointed up the fears about Britain being unprepared for war with Germany” Read more...

The best books on Spies

Ben Macintyre, Journalist

“A wonderful book both for the espionage aficionado and also for the yachtsman. It testifies to the fact that if you are writing any novel with a technical basis, it is good to do research and get it right. This is the only novel he wrote; he went on to become a very committed political fellow.” Read more...

The best books on The Secret Service

Keith Jeffery

“It’s the Great Game again, but this time it is played out in a small sailing boat on the Frisian Coast in Germany around 1900.” Read more...

The best books on Victorian Adventures

Stephen Evans, Diplomats & Former Diplomat

Our most recommended books

  • Middlemarch
    by George Eliot

  • War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

    War and Peace
    by Leo Tolstoy

  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

    Jane Eyre
    by Charlotte Brontë

  • The Arabian Nights or Tales of 1001 Nights

  • Nineteen Eighty-Four
    by George Orwell

  • The Road
    by Cormac McCarthy

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