Childers, Erskine

The British author Robert Erskine Childers (not to be confused with his son Erskine Hamilton Childers, the fourth president of Ireland) was a famous and feared advocate of Irish independence in the early 20th century who was executed for being in possession of illegal arms. Apart from several non-fiction books, he was the author of The Riddle of the Sands (1903), considered as one of the best novels ever written. Childers was born in Mayfair, London, as one of five children to an English civil servant and translator and his Anglo-Irish wife. The father died of tuberculosis in 1876, and the mother moved with her children to her family home in Glendalough, County Wicklow. She fell ill soon afterwards and spent a few years in hospital before she died.