It is 1902. Englishman Carruthers yearns for a summer holiday. When a letter arrives from Davies, an old university acquaintance, requesting his company on yachting expedition in the Baltic Sea ...

so Erskine Childers’ “The Riddle of the Sands” (1903) is a pioneering spy novel — and still near the top of the heap. Childers’ story of Britons trying to foil German spies takes place ...

His was a life of tragic gallantry and compromised loyalties, issues very much at the heart of his sole novel, “The Riddle of the Sands ... central character, Carruthers (how English can ...